Entries Tagged 'Film' ↓

Did white women have a rabid response to Asher Roth’s recent April Fool Day’s “remake”, right, of D’Angelo’s 2000 “Untitled (How Does It Feel?)”, left?

You know: The kind you’ve seen erupt over and over in Black females since D near-dangled his dingle on MTV. Even more, what’s weirder: That the pallid Roth would choose to mock himself this way, or that D’Angelo has taken nearly a decade to follow up his last album, Voodoo?

[via racialicious]

At MEDIA ASSASSIN, we work to make our heds particularly catcy, but, in this instance, need any more be said? It’s Crispin Glover on Happy Days!

I know what you’re thinking: Crispin Hellion Glover, the actor whose note-perfect George McFly in 1985’s Back To The Future broke him out—and whose subsequent appearances on Late Night with David Letterman and in the ratfest remake Willard (here, he sings Michael Jackson’s “Ben”) weirded audiences out—was on Happy Days?

Yep. In November 1983, the seventh episode of the 11th and final season—long after Happy Days had both literally and figuratively jumped the shark in September, 1977—Glover appeared as truant Roach in the series’ “Vocational Education” piece.

Crispin Glover! Not even the fact that he’s sharing the scene with noted “series killer” Ted McGinley as Roger, the school principal, dilutes the joy of this.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, when I spoke with Clive Young in March on NONFICTION, my radio show, I referred to a Star Wars fan film I’d seen of whose name I was not sure. I thought it was The Way of the Saber, but had to research it.

As it turns out, I was mostly correct: The 6-minute short, 2002’s Art of the Saber, by brothers Calvin, Clarence, and Cary Ho, employs the basic phoneme of SW fan film language—two men locked in light saber battle—invigorating it with flashy martial arts. But as opposed to then rehashing tales of Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker, the Ho brothers, instead, frame their somber work with the words of Union soldier Captain Sullivan Ballou’s famed 1861 letter to his spouse, Sarah.

One of the most captivating documents to come out of the Civil War, the note is powerful for the beauty of its prose, the depth of its feeling, and that its author, writing in noble contemplation of sure death, never saw his wife and children again. Ballou, above, 32, was cut down at the First Battle of Bull Run within a week of writing the text.

By drawing from Ballou’s pathos, the Ho brothers imbue their piece with the Captain’s sober dread, forging a story that is both new, timeless, and a powerful meditation on the cost of war.

I hosted author Clive Young, below, on my WBAI radio show, NONFICTION, a few weeks ago, and covered him on MEDIA ASSASSIN, too. Clive recently wrote the book, Homemade Hollywood: Fans Behind The Camera, about amateur fan films: Movies made by ordinary people who love existing storylines about, and characters like, Batman, Spiderman, or Star Trek, and attempt to make their own versions of these films.

I’m really interested in this kind of cinema—I covered the Star Wars fan film phenomenon for the late, great PREMIERE magazine, back in 2001—and Clive has penned a thoughtful, thorough, accessible book. He’s got a great web site, too, one into which he clearly puts a lot of energy, and he mentioned his appearance on the NONFICTION, as you can see, above, complete with a link to the show. Thanks for the link amour, Clive. Keep the good work up.

“You and me are fucking done professionally!!”:
John Connors (Christian Bale) and Terminator

From looking at his movies—mostly the Charlie’s Angels ones—and music videos—like the Offspring’s “Pretty Fly for a White Guy”—I’d kinda assumed that Michigan-born director Joseph McGinty Nichol, better known as McG, was sorta shiny, fast, and shallow, like his cinema.

I think I owe this guy an apology. Continue reading →

Now, the world don’t move! To the beat of just one drum
What might be right for you, may not be right for some….

To folks familiar with cheesy sitcoms from the late ’70s and early ’80s, the theme music to Diff’rent Strokes is so well-known that merely reading its lyrics, above, not to mention hearing its earnest strains, is enough to trigger soppy memories of the show’s early opening visuals. There, each week, good-hearted millionaire Phillip Drummond (Conrad Bain) would escort his new charges, brothers Arnold (Gary Coleman) and Willis (Todd Bridges), above, from a basketball game in the hood, past the wonders of late 20th century New York, to his luxurious apartment building, all in his chaufferred limousine.

Indeed, the gentle innocence and curiosity of children, coupled with the wizened kindness of their doting patron, is what makes UK YouTuber MontyPropps’ “Disturbing Strokes” so unsettling. By switching the spirited soundtrack to a mysterious, mood-laden instrumental, then slightly desaturating the colors in the footage, Propps turns the classic intro into something vaguely hinting at pederasty. By the time Arnold and Willis look up at the towering, phallic structure Drummond calls home, giving only furtive backwards glances as he leads them inside, if nothing else, you’ll believe, as said one poster on Propps’ YouTube channel, that, in film, there is truly no such thing as “incidental music.”

It’s common knowledge that, after masterpieces like Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Fantasia, and other features, Disney animated films kinda went into the toilet. This was particularly true in the 1960s and ’70s, as the studio turned out uninspired crap like The Fox and the Hound, The Aristocats, and more.

However, what’s not been truly clarified, at least until now, is how demoralized the company had to be by the rampant cost-cutting at the studio during that time in order to do this: Create new films by merely retracing sequences from their old ones.

The (apparently French) editor of this short YouTube clip, above, has clipped shots from a number of Disney animated works, like The Jungle Book. Comparing them, he shows that animators of that era were not inspired by their past works, but merely sampling them: Literally redoing their cues with new characters.

Blecch. Thankfully, Disney Animation has since been taken over by Pixar, a company which it owns, and whose track record for storytelling and image quality are pretty much unchallenged. (Reportedly, they also treat their talent well. Disney had a reputation for mismanaging their work staff that, even into this century, was widely known.)

But what the Mouse’s House has made clear is that their problem was never a “2-D vs. 3-D” one. Their problem was imagination, and creating an environment in which it thrived. Sadly, the skills it takes to make that flourish can’t be copied from a movie, literally or otherwise.

Now, that’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout. You’d think with all the increasing hubub about the coming zombie apocalypse, more folks would be getting geared for the dawn of the dead. Leave it to blogger Zack Danger to pick up the gore-soaked slack with his official Danger Zombie Survival Kit.

The emergency wall case, above, comes done up with a blood red mat in a black frame under glass. Inside, it’s power-packed with a stockless tactical shotgun, two cartons of 12-gauge shells, and safety glasses, to protect your eyes from flying metal or bone fragments. Rollin’ up like that, zombies stand less of a chance than roaches swimming in Raid. Like I said, after catching a glimpse of Left 4 Dead‘s corpse-ridden hell, lemme at ’em.

[via FAIL]

The Matrix is probably the film I’ve most seen that, no matter how many times I’ve seen it, I never feel like I’ve really seen it all. It feels inexhaustible. Or, perhaps better, it feels like parts of it are always out of one’s reach, much like the dream that one barely remembers, but that you know shook you to your core mere minutes before.

Continue reading →

“Relax yourself, girl / Please settle down….”

I may have finally cleared up for you what Q-Tip was actually saying (he told me himself) on the chorus of A Tribe Called Quest’s hit 1993 single, whose title I’ve also lifted for today’s post. But that track’s hook also summarizes the sentiment which drove the development of a medical implement that, today, is a common sexual aid: The vibrator.

In the 19th century, doctors were commonly diagnosing “hysteria” in female patients, a condition marked, according to historian Rachel P. Maines, in her book, The Technology of Orgasm, as characterized by ”anxiety, sleeplessness, irritability, nervousness, erotic fantasy, sensations of heaviness in the abdomen, lower pelvic edema and vaginal lubrication.” Hysteria was treated by inducing “paroxysm” in the patient, massaging her genitals until this state was reached. Manual methods, like the water massage technique, illustrated above, were applied. The development of early steam- or manually-powered vibrators, though, enabled doctors to stop using their hands and fingers for this task, while electric vibrators, such as this jackhammer-looking model, above right, made the process even more efficient.

If you’ve just read the previous paragraph in semi-disbelief, then said to yourself, “Hold up: In the 1800s, people were going to the doctor so he could get you off?”, you’re halfway there. Most people today would recognize “hysteria” as feminine sexual arousal. By categorizing it as an illness, however, Victorians avoided messy and uncomfortable discussions about the complexity of female sexuality and desire, relegating those discussions to the physician’s office, where they were, subsequently muted through categorization of the woman’s horniness as an illness. (There was no male equivalent of hysteria.) Argue producer/directors Wendy Slick and Emiko Omori, in their documentary PASSION & POWER: The Technology of Orgasm (a lot of title-borrowing today), hysteria “was a disease manufactured by doctors creating a lucrative clientele and a mutually camouflaged procedure that satisfied both” doctors and their patients.

Wendy Slick is a guest today on my WBAI-NY / 99.5 FM radio show, NONFICTION, this afternoon, Friday, March 20, at 2 pm ET.

But first, we’ll also talk with author Clive Young, whose new book, Homemade Hollywood: Fans Behind The Camera, right, traces another history: That of the so-called “Fan Film revolution—an underground movement where backyard filmmakers are breaking the law to create unauthorized movies starring Batman, James Bond, Captain Kirk, Harry Potter and other classic characters,” ones “which copyrights and common sense would never allow.” I wrote about Star Wars fan films for the much-lamented PREMIERE magazine, back in 2001, so I’m looking forward to the conversation.

You can hear Wendy Slick’s and Clive Young’s ideas by tuning in at 2 pm. If you’re outside of the New York tri-state, check out our stream on the web. If you miss the live show, dig into our archives for up to 90 days after broadcast.