OneDreamRush

Onedreamrush, a series of 42 films by 42 directors lasting 42 seconds and inspired by dreams. Commissioned by vodka brand 42 Below, the program plays like an art house version of BMW Films with a list of participating directors that runs the gamut from avant-garde to art house to advertising.

(42 comes from the 42nd parallel where New Zealand is located. The spring water from the ground is said to be very pure and tasty and is used in the making of their vodka.)

Among them are Kenneth Anger, Jonas Mekas, David Lynch, Larry Clark, Harmony Korine, Lou Ye, Gaspar Noe, Asia Argento, Tadanobu Asano, James Franco, Leos Carax, Mike Figgis, Abel Ferrara, Cat Power, Ryan McGinley, Taika Watiti, Floria Sigismondi and Universal Everything's Matt Pyke.

Onedreamrush debuted in May at the Cannes Film Festival and in China at the National Film Museum in Beijing and is viewable online via the microsite 42x42.com.

Each director was given a budget of $10,000 to produce a film, the option to shoot in China through production partner the Beijing Film Studio and complete creative freedom to interpret the "how we dream" brief. Each director would also retain the rights to their film.

For his film Astarte, Michele Civetta cut together footage from the 1920s of a black magic mass with images of a modern ritualistic occult ceremony as "a traditional invocation of a goddess in terms of a magical dream."

For S/HE, Asia Argento created an abstract micro-documentary about a group of Brazilian transsexuals that hang out at the grocery store down the street from her house in suburban Rome.

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Cronenberg and Cosmopolis

David Cronenberg will write and direct Cosmopolis, an adaptation of the Don DeLillo novel about a 28-year-old millionaire’s day-long travels through Manhattan in pursuit of a haircut.

The novel is about much more than that, of course, but it still represents an unusual project for Cronenberg, who recently has entered a creative renaissance with movies very different from the ones that made him famous, namely Eastern Promises and A History of Violence. He plans to shoot Cosmopolis next year.

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(My last post on) Antichrist

Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe in Lars von Trier's "Antichrist," Zentropa, 2009

Five minutes after it ended (at Cannes), the first screening of Lars von Trier's new, outrageous "Antichrist" was already a thing of legend.

Journalists wobbled away ecstatic, furious, amused, bewildered or physically ill, and at a press conference the next day, the Danish provocateur proclaimed "I am the best film director in the world."

Is von Trier's new yardstick to measure success the barf factor? Or by how many people walked out?


A sample of some critic's reactions from Patrick Walker's piece in LATimes.com.

* Entertainment Weekly's Lisa Schwarzbaum: "Blood spurts, bones are broken, genitals are mutilated. Hellooo? Are you still with me?"

* Time Out New York's Stephen Garrett: "I personally had a ball. [It's] gonzo drama at its most feral."

* Variety's Todd McCarthy: "Von Trier cuts a big fat art-film fart with 'Antichrist.' Traveling deep into NC-17 territory, this may prove a great date movie for pain-is-pleasure couples. Otherwise, most of the director's usual fans will find this outing risible, off-putting or both."

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Antichrist - Gigola - King Shot

Antichrist - Gigola - King Shot
three upcoming movies
Lars von Trier, one of my all time favorite directors, is currently working on Antichrist, a film starring Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg. He wrote and directed it and he's expected to show it at this years Cannes Festival which is sometime in May.

In the village of filmdom Lars' films fly far above the fray. Dancer In The Dark is my favorite one of his.

Trailer

link | link | IMDb | photo (NSFW)

And Gigola has just started in early 2009 and is taken from a steamy novel by Laure Charpentier.

The plot: George, a young woman loses herself in the nightlife of 1960s-era Paris after the suicide of her female lover, and eventually becomes a gigolo catering to women.

It stars the toxic Asia Argento and the smoldering Anne Parillaud, Marisa Berenson, and Tchéky Karyo.

Asia Argento is so enigmatic -- wow! Many of her characters remind me of a younger version of myself, I hesitate to add. I saw her again in Transvylvania a few nights ago.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
She's also working on Alejandro Jodorowsky's King Shot, that's been in production for-ev-er.

Keep churning the good stuff out. We'll be waiting.

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Harmony Korine On His New Collected Fanzines

The Collected Fanzines, released today, compiles eight long-gone booklets from 1992 to 1999, a period that spanned Korine's graduation from high school, Kids, and his first two features, Gummo and Julien Donkey-Boy.

link

I've always been intrigued by Harmony, especially as a director, and think he's way ahead of his time.

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Nagi Noda Passes Away

Nagi Noda, the Japanese artist/designer/director behind groundbreaking music videos and spots passed away on Sunday, September 7. She was 35.

Noda had experienced ongoing complications related to a bad car accident last year that resulted in chronic pain. The exact cause of death was not specified.


Beyond being a brilliant artist and wonderful talent, Nagi was one of the most incredibly unique spirits that I have known," says Sheila Stepanek, CEO/EP Partizan US, which represented Noda. "Our thoughts and prayers are with her family and friends." Stepanek says that Noda passed "in her Mark Ryden dress, Chanel boots, perfect make-up with Viktor & Rolf lace black eye lashes."


website | link

Only 35 years old. Such a talent. She also did those hair hats I've had on here before.

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The "W" Trailer by Oliver Stone

The teaser trailer for W. which based on the life and presidency of George W. Bush. It is directed by Oliver Stone and stars Josh Brolin as George W. Bush.

link | via | more

I'm excited about this one.

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THE INVISIBLE FOREST by Antero Alli

THE INVISIBLE FOREST
by Antero Alli

"An obsessed theatre director brings his troupe out to a forest to ritualize his version of French Surrealist Antonin Artaud's vision of a mythic theatre of gods, ghosts and spirits. They stay at a privately owned campground that includes its own cook, a deaf
mute woman whose secret spirituality engages the hallucinagenic mushrooms that grow wild in the woods. Unbeknownst to the group are her good intentions of spiking their final night's meal with these mushrooms so they may enter and engage the spirit realm, that she believes, they are truly looking for."

The film played in select film festivals around California in June. However you can buy the DVD and view the trailer and 4 minute excerpt from the film.

The "The Mind Is A Liar And A Whore" (2007) dvd and others are also available.

Journal | Website | Other Films by Antero Alli

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THE WALRUS SPEAKS

THE WALRUS SPEAKS

from sasha frere-jones...
This one is self-explanatory. Here’s the description included on the video’s YouTube page:

In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon’s hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview about peace. 38 years later, Jerry has produced a film about it. Using the original interview recording as the soundtrack, director Josh Raskin has woven a visual narrative which tenderly romances Lennon’s every word in a cascading flood of multipronged animation. Raskin marries the terrifyingly genius pen work of James Braithwaite with masterful digital illustration by Alex Kurina, resulting in a spell-binding vessel for Lennon’s boundless wit, and timeless message.

Lennon talks about his problems entering the United States and his general feelings about the economics of war. Levitan reports that some of his friends—Canadians!—don’t like the Beatles because they smoke marijuana and are “hippies.” Lennon suspects that “squares” are involved.

The animation is gorgeous, though not “terrifyingly genius.” And I recommend going to the YouTube page and clicking on “Watch in high quality.” via

I MET THE WALRUS

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Gonzo

GONZO - 7/4/08

From Oscar-wining director Alex Gibney and producer Graydon Carter comes a probing look into the uncanny life of national treasure and gonzo journalism inventor Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. A fast moving, wildly entertaining documentary with an iconic soundtrack, the film addresses the major touchstones in Thompson’s life-his intense and ill fated relationship with the Hell’s Angels, his near-successful bid for the office of sheriff in Aspen in 1970, the notorious story behind the landmark Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, his deep involvement in Senator George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign, and much more. Narrated by Johnny Depp.

see trailer | imdb

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Werner Herzog and David Lynch

David Lynch making new films with Herzog, Jodorowsky

Werner Herzog and David Lynch are teaming for "My Son, My Son," a horror-tinged murder drama based on a true story.

Herzog and his longtime assistant director Herbert Golder co-wrote "Son," loosely based on the true story of a San Diego man who acts out a Sophocles play in his mind and kills his mother with a sword. The low-budget feature will flash back and forth from the murder scene to the disturbed man's story. A guerrilla-style digital video shoot on Coronado Island is tentatively set for March.

In a separate development, Lynch's Absurda production company has attached Asia Argento and Udo Kier to star with Nick Nolte in Alejandro Jodorowsky's metaphysical gangster movie "King Shot."

Marilyn Manson is touted to appear as a prophet in the "Sin City"-style film, which producer Eric Bassett said has enough sex and violence to guarantee an NC-17 rating.

Lynch is executive producing both projects, and Absurda is repping their sales rights in the Cannes market.

"Son" is produced by Eric Bassett, who also is producing "King" with his Absurda colleague Norm Hill and Clavis Films' Simon Shandor.

Herzog, repped by Gersh, is having a busy 2008. He was set to film "Son" in the summer but postponed it to direct Nicolas Cage in a remake of Abel Ferrara's "Bad Lieutenant" starting in July. In the fall, he will shoot the Victorian-era drama "The Piano Tuner" for Focus Features.

All kinds of good film news! [via], link

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It Might Get Loud

It Might Get Loud

Davis Guggenheim has completed filming on a documentary that will look at the story of the electric guitar from the point of view of three significant rock musicians: the Edge, Jimmy Page and Jack White.

Guggenheim, director-producer of "An Inconvenient Truth" and "Deadwood," directed and co-produced "It Might Get Loud," which Thomas Tull financed and produced. The Little Film Co. will represent the pic in Cannes.

Led Zeppelin's Page, U2's the Edge and White, leader of the White Stripes and the Raconteurs, were chosen for their impact across three different generations -- from Page's 1960s days as a session musician and a member of the Yardbirds into the Edge's unique sound developed in the '80s through White's current work. Each explains and demonstrates how he changed the sound of the electric guitar to suit his own style. Pic includes a jam session featuring the three guitarists.

Can't wait to see this. I know that Julie and Frank are looking forward to it.

link | variety | imdb

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The Golden Suicides
by Vanity Fair

When Theresa Duncan, 40, took her own life on July 10, followed a week later by her boyfriend, Jeremy Blake, 35, their friends were stunned and the press was fascinated: what had destroyed this glamorous couple, stars of New York’s multi-media art world, still madly in love after 12 years?

Lovely Theresa Duncan liked to go for drives along the Pacific Coast Highway in her butter-colored Alfa Romeo Spider, listening to Steely Dan. She liked the band for the stories they told about hard-luck characters. Some of their lyrics were read at her funeral, on July 21, in Lapeer, Michigan, her hometown.

When she moved to Los Angeles, Duncan had a two-picture deal with Fox Searchlight and had written and directed a pilot for Oxygen Media. She had "my boyfriend Jeremy Blake"—she was always bringing him up—literally the poster boy of the 2001 "BitStreams" exhibition of digital art at the Whitney Museum. That same year, Blake had been tapped by director Paul Thomas Anderson to create a hallucinogenic dream sequence for Punch Drunk Love, and singer-songwriter Beck had asked him to do a series of covers and a video for his album Sea Change (both released in 2002).

And then, something began to go very wrong. Read More...

Photograph by Bret Haller

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Worms
Uploaded by www-microbia-nl

This experimental underground music video shows debutant singer Lolly Jane Blue on her way down the earth layers; a journey leading to a swirling underwater climax.

www.silvanderwoerd.com - video director
www.lollyjaneblue.com - singer songwriter.

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The Beginning: May 2004
»FBI Abducts Artist, Seizes Art
»Feds Unable to Distinguish Art from Bioterrorism
»Grieving Artist Denied Access to Deceased Wife's Body
[Read More]

The Latest: October 11, 2007

SICKNESS, "ABSURD" DOJ PROSECUTION FORCE SCIENTIST TO PLEAD IN PRECEDENT-SETTING CASE
Scientist's Wife and Daughter Comment on Case

Buffalo, NY - Today in Federal District Court, Dr. Robert Ferrell, Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, under tremendous pressure, pled guilty to lesser charges rather than facing a prolonged trial for federal charges of "mail fraud" and "wire fraud" in a surreal post-PATRIOT Act legal case that has attracted worldwide attention.

"From the beginning, this has been a persecution, not a prosecution. Although I have not seen the final agreement, the initial versions contained incorrect and irrelevant information," said Dr. Dianne Raeke Ferrell, Dr. Ferrell's wife and an Associate Professor of Special Education and Clinical Services at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. (To read Gentry Ferrell's full statement, please visit:
http://caedefensefund.org/press/ferrellplea.html)

PLEA COMES AMIDST OVERWHELMING PUBLIC SUPPORT FOR DEFENDANTS

The plea bargain agreement comes at a time of overwhelming public support for the two defendants. A film about the case, Strange Culture - directed by Lynn Hershman Leeson and featuring Tilda Swinton (Chronicles of Narnia, Michael Clayton), Thomas Jay Ryan (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), and Peter Coyote (E.T., Erin Brockovich) - has drawn widespread critical praise and public interest, with screenings in dozens of U.S. cities after its selection to open both the 2007 Human Rights Watch International Film Festival and the Berlin International Film Festival documentary section. An October 1 screening of the film at the Museum of Modern
Art in New York City drew a crowd of 400 who stayed for an hour afterward for a discussion with Professor Kurtz, director Hershman Leeson, and actress Tilda Swinton. Special benefit screenings of the film in numerous cities have raised thousands of dollars to offset the two defendants' escalating legal costs.

BACKGROUND TO THE CASE

The legal nightmare of renowned scientist Dr. Robert Ferrell and artist and professor Dr. Steven Kurtz began in May 2004. Professor Kurtz and his late wife Hope were founding members of the internationally exhibited art and theater collective Critical Art Ensemble. Over the past decade cultural institutions worldwide have commissioned and hosted Critical Art Ensemble's participatory theater projects that help the general public understand biotechnology and the many issues surrounding it. In May 2004 the Kurtzes were preparing a project examining genetically modified agriculture for the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, when Hope Kurtz died of heart failure. Detectives who responded to Professor Kurtz's 911 call deemed the couple's art suspicious, and called the FBI. Within hours the artist was illegally detained as a suspected "bioterrorist" as dozens of federal agents in Hazmat suits sifted through his work and impounded his computers, manuscripts, books, his cat, and even his wife's body.

For more information about the case, including extensive documentation, please visit CAE Defense Fund
News Story
Yahoo Group
Critical Art Ensemble

Strange Culture: DEC 11 it will air on Sundance Channel, then it will go to DVD sales.

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"Redacted" stuns Venice

A new film about the real-life rape and killing of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl by U.S. soldiers who also murdered her family stunned the Venice festival, with shocking images that left some viewers in tears.

"Redacted", by U.S. director Brian De Palma, is one of at least eight American films on the war in Iraq due for release in the next few months and the first of two movies on the conflict screening in Venice's main competition.

Inspired by one of the most serious crimes committed by American soldiers in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, it is a harrowing indictment of the conflict and spares the audience no brutality to get its message across.

De Palma, 66, whose "Casualties of War" in 1989 told a similar tale of abuse by American soldiers in Vietnam, makes no secret of the goal he is hoping to achieve with the film's images, all based on real material he found on the Internet.

"The movie is an attempt to bring the reality of what is happening in Iraq to the American people," he told reporters after a press screening.

"The pictures are what will stop the war. One only hopes that these images will get the public incensed enough to motivate their Congressmen to vote against this war," he said.

Abeer Qasim Hamza al-Janabi was gang raped, killed and burnt by American soldiers in Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad, in March 2006. Her parents and younger daughter were also killed.

Five soldiers have since been charged with the attack. Four of them have been given sentences of between 5 and 110 years.

"IT'S ALL ON THE INTERNET" Continued...

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Wonderwall

WONDERWALL (1968)

An eccentric, lovable scientist falls in love with the girl next door - in an unusual way. Set in 1960's London, Wonderwall tells the story of a reclusive professor who becomes obsessed with a stunning model called Penny Lane. A psychedelic fantasy steeped in voyeurism, this film features a musical score by George Harrison with musical contributions from Eric Clapton and Ravi Shankar. Dutch designers The Fool, were set designers for the movie.

I like this film; but I like strange, psychedelic films so view it with caution it that's not your usual fare. It may remind you somewhat of Jodorowsky or Fellini. It's been showing on television lately and you can also get it at Netflix and at Yahoo!.

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Next For Johnny Depp

Warner Bros. is teaming with Depp's Infinitum-Nihil and Graham King's GK Films to develop a feature based on the '60s daytime supernatural sudser "Dark Shadows."

Depp, who is coming off "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" and who just wrapped the Tim Burton-directed "Sweeney Todd," is next expected to star in "Shantaram," a Mira Nair directed adaptation of the Gregory David Roberts novel that Depp, King and Plan B are producing for Warner Bros. Depp, King and WB are also mobilizing to make a film about the life of Alexander Litvinenko, with Depp poised to play the former KGB agent, who was fatally poisoned.

link

Dark Shadows could be fun. And the Litvinenko story must be told; it may as well be Depp.

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Mods and Rockers Festival

Mods and Rockers Festival: Skidoo

Writer Paul Krassner shares his recollections about the 1968 acid-comedy film Skidoo directed by Otto Preminger. The movie has its first 35mm screening in Los Angeles in over 25 years on Saturday July 14 at the Mods & Rockers Film Festival in Hollywood.

Timothy Leary had a certain sense of pride about the prominent people he and his associates had introduced to the psychedelic revolution. He once told me the names of some of the folks whose lives had been changed by taking LSD. Among them: director Otto Preminger, actor Cary Grant, conservative think-tanker Herman Kahn, Alcoholics Anonymous founder Bill Wilson, Time magazine publishers Henry and Clare Booth Luce.

"But," Leary told me, "I consider Otto Preminger one of our failures."

...(Preminger's) Skidoo was pro-acid propaganda thinly disguised as a comedy adventure. However, LSD was not the reason that the FBI was annoyed with the film. Rather, according to Gleason's FBI files, they objected to one scene in the script where a file cabinet is stolen from an FBI building. Gleason was later approved as a special FBI contact in the entertainment business.

One of the characters in Skidoo was a Mafia chieftain named God. Screenwriter Bill Cannon had suggested Groucho Marx for the part. Preminger said it wasn't a good idea, but since they were already shooting, and that particular character was needed on the set in three days, Groucho got the job. During one scene, Preminger was screaming instructions at him.

Groucho yelled back, "Are you drunk?"

When Skidoo was released in 1968, Tim Leary saw it, and he cheerfully admitted, "I was fooled by Otto Preminger. He's much hipper than me."

Krassner's just got tons of good stories, doesn't he?

link

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Second Annual David Lynch Weekend

Second Annual David Lynch Weekend * May 25-28 * Memorial Day Weekend featuring Filmmaker David Lynch, Quantum Physicists John Hagelin, and Singer/Songwriter Donovan at the Maharishi University of Management. There will also be live brainwave demonstrations on meditataion and transcending.

Through David’s work, thousands of students are learning the creativity-enhancing, stress-reducing Transcendental Meditation technique in the US and around the world. David is now launching a new program "Teaching One Million Students to Meditate."

link

Catching the Big Fish: Meditation Consciousness and Creativity - washingtonpost.com New David Lynch book and transcript from the online chat today on the Washington Post where he discusses films and transcendental meditation.

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