October 2010
1 post
Wild Nothing - Gemini
Sofia Coppola’s film about two ten-year-old French twin sisters. The film depicts two days in their lives inter-cut back and forth. One day takes place in the Spring and one during the Fall. It is impossible to tell which day comes first in chronological order, but the days are exactly half a year apart from each other. In the Spring scenes the girls are dressed like the twins from The...
April 2010
2 posts
Broken Bells - Broken Bells
Shia LaBeouf and Jesse Eisenberg play two Los Angeles native musician brothers who start a Beach Boys style pop rock group in 1962. Robert Downey Jr. plays their father and manager. The father was a struggling vaudevillian performer who never succeed in his attempted transition into the Hollywood film industry. He pushes his sons to succeed, but then resents them as the group’s popularity...
Beach House - Teen Dream
A David Lynch film following a day in which a wife (Isabella Rossellini) prepares for a party in honor of the return of her husband (Kyle MacLachlan), an Astronaut who has been on a mission living on NASA’s International Space Station for the past 3 years.
The story borrows from from Virgina Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway both thematically and in stream of conciseness styling of...
December 2009
1 post
Small Black - Small Black EP
Jonathan Demme 1989 short film starring Daryl Hannah as a night-shift security guard at a pharmaceutical factory. It begins with Daryl silently making the rounds, checking locks and scanning empty rooms with her flashlight. The beam of light dances and reflects off of the test tubes, lab equipment, plastic containers and the rainbow assortments of pills.
After noting her initials on a clipboard...
November 2009
3 posts
A Sunny Day In Glasgow - Ashes Grammar
Wong Kar-Wai directs an atmospheric film using updated themes and plot points from Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. Bryce Dallas Howard stars as an up and coming American installation artist commisioned to complete a year long project in Tokyo. Her patron is a brutish and mysteriously alluring businessman played by Ken Watanabe. The pair grow closer in the confines of the art space, but the...
Wild Beasts - Two Dancers
An Oliver Postgate stop-motion animation depicting the legend of the building of Stonehenge during Arthurian era Briton. Merlin uses wit and wizardly powers to convince uncooperative Giants to give up, carry and assemble the rocks needed for the construction. Two dance sequence bookend the film. The opening dance depicts the Giants discovering the healing stones in Africa. The final dance is a...
The Fiery Furnaces - I'm Going Away
A Coen Brothers’ dark comedy and aesthetic homage to Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show. Sandra Bullock and Frances McDormand play the native Texan wives of Midwest immigrants William H. Macy and Tom Hanks who sink both of their families’ savings into opening Texas’ first John Deere tractor dealership. The wives produce a series of increasingly elaborate local...
October 2009
3 posts
Volcano Choir - Unmap
Alfonso Cuarón adapts a stripped down and politically reflective reinterpretation of Peter Pan. The adaptation emphasizes Neverland as an escape from Victorian era industralized pollution and social oppression of colonial society. The production design of the imaginary island’s oceans and jungles mimic the natural landscapes of Mexico City and surrounding Central American areas. Javier...
Jay-Z - The Blueprint 3
A Martin Scorcese film that tracks the epic rivalry of two door-to-door Mary Kay Cosmetics sales ladies across the boroughs of NYC. The women, both stay-at-home wives of Mafia connected “contractors,” began as friends raising their respective families in the same area of Staten Island. After their grown children leave home they decide to join the Mary Kay sales team to combat their...
Washed Out - Life of Leisure EP
Three trailers included on an old VHS copy of the movie Stand By Me. The tape quality is spotty due to age and usage. The original owner of the tape watched the video 50 times in just under a two month period and generally fastforwarded through the previews. The first trailer is for a Sylvester Stallone legal drama whose existence you barely remember. The second preview includes Melanie...
September 2009
6 posts
The Antlers - Hospice
Darren Aronofsky cast his wife Rachel Weisz as the lead in this embellished fictionalized biopic of the behind the scenes events during filming of horror classic Rosemary’s Baby. Weisz dyes and crops her hair blonde to match the iconic Mia Farrow pixie cut, Jason Schwartzman plays director Roman Polanski, Diane Kruger vamps as Polanksi’s doomed wife Sharon Tate and Steve Martin looms...
YACHT - See Mystery Lights
Todd Solondz adapts an incomplete John Hughes script about a NASA engineer’s dysfunctional relationship with his eccentric family. James Spader stars as the patriarch of the Yoblazchi family. He is a third generation Ukrainian-American, an avid kaleidoscope collector and he lives with his family in Schaumburg, Illinois. Catherine O’Hara plays the engineer’s wheelchair bound...
Bat For Lashes - Two Suns
The Karate Kid meets The Neverending Story. LISTEN
Friendly Fires - Friendly Fires
Neil Jordon casts Cillian Murphy as a club promoter turned freedom fighter in this story of a dystopian future on a distant planet called New Earth. The planet’s distance from the sun and rotational orbit keep it shadowed in night for the equivalent of five hundred Old Earth years. The continuous darkness promoted the development of a hedonistic party culture which made it famous amongst the...
The Dodos - Visiter
Emile Hirsch plays Patrick Schwikkard a South African long distance runner living in Portland, Oregon. Patrick was taught to run by his childhood best friend Milton, a Zimbabwean immigrant in Johannesburg. Patrick works the night shift at the University of Portland library where most evenings he sees a woman who turns out to be an adult student and single mother named Ashley (played by Liv Tyler)....
August 2009
18 posts
Chad VanGaalen - Soft Airplane
Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s first fully CGI project done in conjunction with Aardman Animations Studio. A clustered community of amoebas live together in a multi-story organic apartment complex called Genetic Heights. The residence is the only structure on the far reaching landscape of the petri dish. In the beginning space and resources are plentiful, but as the creatures overindulge and...
Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca
Film remake of a Vincente Minnelli directed play. Attention to technicolor, set design and choreographed movement invoke the painterly aesthetic of Minnelli’s work. A young girl falls in love with a boy who lives on the same tree lined street as her in Brooklyn New York. The dream of claiming her first kiss is ruined when her paleontologist father lands a new job and moves the family to the...
Girl Talk - Feed The Animals
Experimental abstract film project. Constraints and rules of the project- Footage: 24 hour MTV broadcasts from July 7th (07/07) 1987, 1997, and 2007. Edits: Cuts sequentially between the timelines of each day every 7 seconds and continues on a loop. Currently on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. LISTEN
Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
David Gordon Green directed trilogy of films each of which follows one of three brothers during the American Civil War. The short films are typically screened together making one feature length film, but each piece can be screened individually as a stand alone story. The youngest brother, barely seven years old, enters a yo-yo competition. The middle brother is a drummer boy and solider...
M83 - Saturdays = Youth
A French movie commissioned in 1987 by La Société Officiel de la Cinéma Français to compete with the booming popularity of the American Teen Flicks of the 80s. A semi-autobiographical piece by a philosopher/writer/director about a group of teenagers living in Paris. Protagonist Thomas (or Tommy as he prefers to be called) is besotted with a Goth girl named Anna who is obsessed with Joy Division,...
TV On The Radio - Dear Science
A contemporary noir thriller and domestic drama directed by Michael Mann. Detective Ed Arlington (Played by Forest Whitaker) is uninsured and sick. Arlington was fired from his job as newspaper reporter ten years prior and had decided to use his investigative skills to go into the private eye biz. The self-employment game has kept him skint and the devastating diagnosis would strip him of his...
Rilo Kiley - More Adventurous
A Classic Golden Era Hollywood studio film. Laurence Olivier and Ginger Rogers star as the Ancient Roman twin Gods Apollo and Diana. Bickering and sparring with both words and wit the Gods use their worshippers to play out a grand battle of the sexes. Trivia Facts: A scene with more direct references to the incestuous overtones in Apollo and Diana’s relationship was cut from the film when it...
Joanna Newsom - The Milk-Eyed Mender
Character sketch. Milk-Eyed the leader of the resistance. 1979 animated film. LISTEN
Erykah Badu - Mama's Gun
A domestic goddess played by Zoe Saldana reaches a breaking point in her seemingly perfect marriage. As the wife of a deployed soldier she lives alone on a U.S. Army Base in rural Georgia and her homemaker role has become draining and tedious. After a screaming fight over the phone with her soon to return husband she finally snaps. She pushes appliances off the counters, yanks dishes out of...
Fever Ray - Fever Ray
Danish auteur Lars von Trier’s first big budget period piece. A black and white film depicting the epic journey of a 1000 A.D. era Viking whaling ship. A crew of 20 men and a stowaway girl are led on the Ahab-ian journey by Ivar Svavarsson, a thoughtful conqueror played by Alexander Skarsgård. The solid grey tone of a streamlined Longship cuts through the contrasting blown-out...
Ducktails - Ducktails
Muppets Take The Beach! Kermit and the motley crew of puppets are back in this tale of surf, sun and groovy fun. The gang is off for an extra special vacation in Los Angeles. Miss Piggy wants to strut her stuff in Hollywood, but the rest of her friends just want to relax by the ocean. While Piggy is off shopping the Muppets are bummed to find their favorite beach trashed with pollution. They...
Japandroids - Post-Nothing
1997 Richard Linklater film starring Ethan Embry and Neve Campbell as two exchange students in Paris. Ethan knew Neve back in Vancouver, but he hadn’t seen her since their high school graduation. Now he keeps running into her all over Paris and maybe there is a reason more than coincidence? Lukas Haas co-stars as Ethan’s French childhood pen pal. Lukas is a pro inline skater. LISTEN
Hercules and Love Affair - Hercules and Love...
Black screen. A high pitched squeal hisses and modulates in tone then abruptly stops. Dead silence. Cut to an extreme close-up of Alexander Baptiste lying in a pool of his own blood. He sees ambulance lights and a gathering crowd, but the chaotic scene is completely silent to him. It is late 1970s New York City. Alexander, a piano student at Juilliard, was viciously attacked after a Rod Stewart...
Department of Eagles - In Ear Park
An early Robert Altman film based on a popular young adult novel written by Beverly Cleary. Shelley Duvall stars as a 7th grader named Jules who is a foot and a half taller than everyone else in her grade. Susan Sarandon plays her best friend Mavis Greenwood. Mavis’ parents are getting divorced and Jules suspects her own father has something to do with the Greenwood’s problems. The...
Michael Jackson - Dangerous
Character sketch. After school special. Air Date: Summer 1993. - for Arturo M. LISTEN
Deerhunter - Microcastle
This 41 minute long Hayao Miyazaki anime is an extended short or a mini-movie depending how you choose to view it. The main character is a ghost who loves Greaser culture. He styles his pallid quiff into a plasmatic pompadour and wears an original Teen Angel leather jacket. His best friend is a beetle that lives inside a nut. Miyazaki’s flat fill rending of 3D spaces creates...
Ramona Falls - Intuit
Rural Colonial Era farmer Samuel Worthington hadn’t thought much of what lay outside his village until Andrew Sinclair and his enchanting daughter Isabelle show up at his doorstep. The Sinclairs are on a mapping expedition up the Southern Colonies into the Canadian Territories. A month after the travelers’ departure the lovelorn Samuel decides to follow suit and find Isabelle. His...
Major Lazer - Guns Don't Kill People...Lazers Do
M.I.A. makes her acting debut in a scene opposite Idris Elba in this Guy Richie thriller. She plays a South African illegal arms dealer. The sex scene takes place on the side of a cliff and dangerously close to a cactus. LISTEN
July 2009
10 posts
St. Vincent - Actor
A cult fantasy miniseries produced by the BBC in 1974. Three orphan children (one of whom was played by a young Ralph Fiennes) are accidentally trapped overnight in the famous Old Vic Theater when they get separated from the rest of their class. The spirits of various Shakespearian characters begin to appear and haunt the children. Patrick Stewart flits around as a spritely Puck and Maggie Smith...
Beach House - Devotion
Sofia Coppola directs an unconventional look at the contrastive sides of marriage. Ryan Gosling stars in the dual role of Groom and Bride. The couple are never seen together until the final scene which is shot in a hall of mirrors. Though camera and editing tricks, Gosling depicts the extended family and priest during the ceremony. The final shot: his lips meet hers in a mirrored kiss. - for...
Dan Deacon - Bromst
An experimental documentary project recording the history, technological engineering and daily commute of The Shinkansen - Japan’s high-speed bullet train railway system. Wide-angle HD cameras are uses to film the exterior shots and the interiors are captured with personal PDA, cellphone and point/shoot cameras. The documentary is bookended and interspersed with realtime footage of the 1.5...
The Walkmen - You & Me
An often overlooked New Wave gem set on Christmas Eve on the French Rivera, 1962. A secretary and architecture student Marie-Louise waits in a large hotel room rented by her married lover- the Mayor of their small hometown. Although she feels silly staying by the beach in the dead of winter she knows it is the best location to avoid running into any acquaintances. Bored and lonely Marie-Louise...
Neko Case - Middle Cyclone
In the volcanic gas plains of Jupiter Sissy Spacek plays the Sheriff of a sparsely populated Earth Federation Colony. Having traveled halfway across the galaxy and back the Sheriff has seen it all, but her weary attitude is challanged by the arrival of old flame and eager prospector played by Terence Stamp. While his swagger and easy wit may intrigue her, she must remain vigilantly aware of her...
Sunset Rubdown - Dragonslayer
Guillermo Del Toro reimagines a traditional Norwegian folktale. He uses the beloved original characters of Fox and Otter, but updates the story by placing the action in a modern day cardiologist office. The adventure and magic of the journey are captured with a mixture of live action film, stop-motion animation and shadow puppets. LISTEN
Women - Women
Jodie Foster plays a single woman in her late 40s who moves from her home state of Texas to San Francisco when her estranged younger sister contacts her after a 15 year absence. Her sister, played by Felicity Huffman, has struggled with mental health issues since their mother’s death at the hands of their abusive father during their adolescence. (The mother will be played by Francis McDormand in...
Lindstrøm - Where You Go I Go Too
One night in 1978 a little boy finds a spaceship behind a nightclub in Berlin where Donna Summer is preforming a week long series of shows. LISTEN
Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest
Glenn Close plays a New England mother of an adopted child who is now grown and about to leave for collage. During the summer before school starts they are off to visit his birthplace of Mali for the first time since his adoption. Directed by Ang Lee. LISTEN
Wavves - Wavves
A scene in a 1994 Gus Vant Sant film were River Phoenix runs through the streets of Baltimore. LISTEN