O’er the years EIT! has built upon their classic Holiday Special, each year creating a more abominable video collage of everyone’s least favorite time of the year! A millennium’s worth of VHS memories of misplaced sentimentalities, fist fights over toys for tots, erotic Santas, Nazi elves, and an endless parade of singing kids will surely teach everyone the true meaning of it all.
Watch the special here.
Bonus clip:
The story behind one of the worst renditions of a Christmas song ever recorded:
In light of Philip K. Dick’s birthday tomorrow (he would have been 90), it’s an appropriate time to visit (or revisit) the film adaptation of his posthumously published novel “Radio Free Albemuth”. Being a longtime PKD fan and one of the film’s Kickstarter contributors, I admittedly wouldn’t be a completely objective critic, but after having seen it a few times its achievements and shortcomings become more apparent.
Like the novel it’s based on, Radio Free Albemuth is one of the most personal of Philip K. Dick’s narratives, featuring the most faithful retelling of his 2-3-74 experiences. Filmed on a shoestring budget by John Alan Simon the movie has a fitting late 70s/early 80s aesthetic. Much of the dialogue is straight out of the novel but I personally would have wanted a more streamlined and nuanced script with less tangential details and exposition, though the actors across the board do a commendable job delivering their lines as naturally and believably as possible. The many dream sequences could have benefited from a higher budget and better visual consistency, but were able to accomplish what was needed for the plot. The prison scenes near the end seemed a bit rushed and not reflective of the oppressiveness of actual prisons, though that was probably largely due to budgetary reasons as well.
Despite its flaws, I still find the film engaging and worth recommending. Aspects of the story may come across to modern audiences as cheesy but still works on a meta level. In our sophisticated real life corporate techno-dystopia, the idea of individuals trying to incite revolution through subliminal messaging embedded in pop songs requires a suspension of disbelief. However in a more general general sense, countless creators through history (including writers and filmmakers) have made attempts to subvert society and culture with varying and impossible to quantify results.
Watch the full film on Hoopla here: https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/11350683
“The Boxer’s Omen” (1983) is a gonzo Hong Kong horror film directed by Kuei Chih-Hung and produced by the Shaw Brothers. Phillip Ko stars as Fei Kao, a boxer whose brother is nearly killed in a match by a rival from Thailand (played by Bolo Yeung). To get revenge, Fei travels to Thailand where he discovers he happens to be a spiritual twin of a revered Buddhist monk whose temple is under siege from a black magic cult. In a series of spiritual battles, the protagonist and his fellow monks must overcome demonic bats, spiders, snakes and caterpillars, floating human heads, animated crocodile skulls and statues, and a she-devil among other obstacles. While some of the puppetry work may seem amateurish by today’s standards, the often strikingly bizarre visuals evoke psychedelic fare such as Altered States and The Holy Mountain as well as aspects of giallo cinema or the supernatural genre films produced by Tsui Hark.
“Bimbo’s Initiation” (1931) is an unnerving and surreal Fleischer Studio short animation. It’s an early example of mass media featuring blatant occult symbolism and has influenced a number of artists such as Jim Woodring (the Frank cartoons), Richard Elfman (Forbidden Zone), Joe Dante (Twilight Zone: The Movie) and Jared Moldenhauer (the Cuphead video game).
“Shakedown” (1988) is an action/crime drama written and directed by James Glickenhaus. Peter Weller and Sam Elliot star as Dalton (an idealistic lawyer) and Marks (a veteran cop) who team up to defend a low-level crack dealer who is framed to cover up a ring of crooked cops working for a drug lord. In the midst of his case, Dalton rekindles an affair with the prosecutor of the case Cantrell (Patricia Charbonneau), unbeknownst to his fiancée Gail (Blanche Baker). Shakedown is one of the more enjoyable and underrated low-budget action films of the 80s.
Film synopsis from BullfrogFilms.com:
BLUEFIN is a tale of epic stakes set in “the tuna capital of the world,” North Lake, Prince Edward Island, Canada. The film explores the baffling mystery of why the normally wary bluefin tuna no longer fear humans. Local fishermen swear tuna are so starving and abundant now that they will literally eat out of people’s hands like pets. But something is not right. Have these “endangered” tuna stocks suddenly recovered as the fishermen claim? Or are we actually hunting down the last of them–like the buffalo–as scientists claim? One thing is certain: this sudden and incredible abundance of tuna off their shores flies in the face of scientific assessments claiming endangered stocks are down by 90 percent.
With stunning cinematography, director John Hopkins documents this mystery and brings the issues into sharp focus. At the heart of this documentary lies a passionate concern by all about the fate of the giant bluefin tuna. Isn’t it time we learned to appreciate the giant, and relentlessly hunted, bluefin as extraordinary “wildlife,” in the same way we love whales, dolphins and panda bears?
Watch the full film here.
“Dick” (1999) is a cult comedy co-written (with Sheryl Longin) and directed by Andrew Fleming. It’s an absurdist retelling of the events surrounding the Watergate scandal which led to the resignation of Richard “Tricky Dick” Nixon (played in the film by Dan Hedaya). Kirsten Dunst and Michelle Williams star as Betsy and Arlene, two fun-loving and ditzy best friends, who, through a random chain of events, become the legendary “Deep Throat” figure ultimately responsible for bringing down the Nixon presidency. Will Ferrell and Bruce McCulloch star as this film’s version of Woodward and Bernstein. A roster of comedic actors including Teri Garr, Dave Foley, Harry Shearer, Jim Breuer and Ryan Reynolds also make appearances.
Watch the full film here.
By Oliver Hall
Source: Dangerous Minds
Les dents du singe (The Monkey’s Teeth) is the directorial debut of René Laloux, the animator who made Fantastic Planet and Time Masters. This, his first short, came out of the experimental La Borde clinic at Cour-Cheverny. As supervisor of artistic activities at La Borde, Laloux staged therapeutic puppet shows with the resident malades mentaux during the years before he gave them their big break in the motion picture business.
According to his obit in Positif, Laloux and his patients were aided in writing the screenplay for Les dents du singe by Félix Guattari, later the co-author of a number of influential books with the philosopher Gilles Deleuze; the group’s screenwriting method was something like a combination of “automatic writing, exquisite corpse, and Jung’s tests.” In 1960, Guattari was working at La Borde as a therapist. He had been drawn to the clinic by its founder, the Lacanian psychiatrist Jean Oury.
The biography Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari: Intersecting Lives conveys a sense of life at La Borde:
Oury baptized his clinic as soon as it opened in April 1953, writing a constitution that he dated Year I (a tongue-in-cheek reference to the French Revolution) and that defined the three guiding principles for this collective therapeutic undertaking. The mangers were protected by democratic centralism, reflecting the Marxist-Leninist ideal that was still popular in the year of Stalin’s death. The second principle reflected the idea of a communist utopia whereby each staff member would alternate between manual labor and intellectual work, which effectively made any status temporary. Tasks were assigned on a rotating basis: everyone in the clinic switched from medical care to housekeeping, from running workshops to preparing theatrical activities. The last principle was antibureaucratic, so things were organized in a communitarian way whereby responsibilities, tasks, and salaries were all shared. Although the term “institutional psychotherapy” had not yet been coined, many of its themes were already in evidence: spatial permeability, freedom of movement, a critique of professional roles and qualifications, institutional flexibility, and the need for a patients’ therapy club.
Hollywood has not yet produced many tales about bike-riding simians meting out justice at the dentist’s office, but I expect we’ll see a “reboot” of The Monkey’s Teeth before long.
INDIAN COUNTRY NEWS
"It is the duty of every man, as far as his ability extends, to detect and expose delusion and error"..Thomas Paine
Human in Algorithms
From the Roof Top
I See This
blog of the post capitalist transition.. Read or download the novel here + latest relevant posts
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After the Crash 