ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS

HOUSE OF BLONDES

2011-09-17T09:18:00.000-07:00

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HOUSE OF BLONDES

2011-08-06T17:22:00.000-07:00

HOUSE OF BLONDES
HOUSE OF BLONDES
HOUSE OF BLONDES
HOUSE OF BLONDES
HOUSE OF BLONDES
HOUSE OF BLONDES
HOUSE OF BLONDES
HOUSE OF BLONDES

HOUSE OF BLONDES

House of Blondes

2011-03-31T17:50:00.000-07:00

HOUSE OF BLONDES

House of Blondes

HoUsE OF BLoNdEs

Bump It

2010-03-27T08:40:00.000-07:00

New Erykah Badu out this week. The whole album is filled with strong tracks but the standout is "Gone Baby, Don't Be Long" which uses a sample from Paul McCartney and Wings' soft rock classic "Arrow Through Me". She got her sample clearance using Twitter and her connection to Stella McCartney. The analog girl in a digital world days are officially over.

The single shot video for "Window Seat" is of her making a slow and revealing and inexplicable pilgrimage to the grassy knoll in Dallas. Crazy. More, please.

The Stones Made It Good To Be Alone

2010-03-25T16:25:00.000-07:00

The album cover for Tattoo You by Rolling Stones is one of my all-time favorites. The red background, the font, the proportion of image to negative space - all perfect. The whole package, actually. The green back cover, the strange horse high heel and gray/white eye-crossing graphic inner sleeve (they also used both images for the "Start Me Up" sleeve). The artist who put it all together is Peter Corriston, who also did Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti.

I'm not wild about some of the tracks on the first, "rock", side but damn if "Start Me Up" doesn't still do exactly that. The second, "ballad", side, however, is one of the most consistently rewarding Stones moments. "Heaven", with Jagger on guitar, Keith Richards nowhere to be found, is the best of the lot.

EYE CANDY

2010-03-15T18:41:00.000-07:00

Here in three month old 2010 there's a 12" single cover to rank with the best. Glass Candy have already used the image above on their MySpace page for a couple of years and sold a messy t-shirt with it but it more perfectly suits the 12" format. They've even used some great colors for the text on the back. Nicely done by the ace team over at Italians Do It Better. And, music not forgotten, the remixed "Feeling Without Touching" is a Saturday night thrill too.

Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night

2010-03-05T18:28:00.000-08:00

The best Saturday night bar/club/party right now is the Loft Party at Market Hotel in Bushwick. It's a club that serves drinks from a table that looks like the one your mother sold bundt cake at during elementary school bake sales.

One Chip To Save Us All

2010-02-02T17:35:00.000-08:00

2010 is off to a strong start with the release of Hot Chip's One Life Stand. On the fantastic title track little Alexis Taylor sounds like the sweetest boy in school.

Hot Chip amazes. They balance a retro sound with modern elements in a natural way, have melodies that sound emotionally honest, and everything's effortlessly arranged. The Warning's "Look After Me" is a beautiful 21st Century version of Hall and Oates' classic "One on One".

Missing the sadly defunct Beta Band is a little easier because Hot Chip is in the world.

UK heroes The Vinyl Factory has an insane deluxe edition that will be dancing in my dreams.

DâM-FunK Will Melt Your Bones

2009-11-15T13:32:00.000-08:00

DâM-FunK's Toeachizown is a debut record so huge it's coming out on five (5!) LP's in 2010. For now, a double CD treatment will have to suffice. "Brookside Park" should be a permanent part of any successful weekend. As much material as there is, you just can't get enough of this.

Red Bull

2009-09-20T12:04:00.000-07:00

The NY Times has a fascinating look today into the publication next month of Carl Jung's literally beyond crazy Red Book. The article discusses how Jung would self-induce hallucinations in an effort to tap his unconscious mind but it fails to mention exactly what he did to make himself hallucinate. Jung taking drugs a hundred years ago in order to free his mind is something not mentioned but, looking at his drawings and dense German text, it's impossible to conclude otherwise.

The actual original Red Book, previously only seen by members of the Jung family, will be exhibited at the Rubin Museum starting October 7th.

Clash on Cassette

2009-09-07T12:15:00.000-07:00

An original collection of cassette tape inspired art can be found here.

Going Underground

2009-08-15T14:36:00.000-07:00

About twice a year Soul Jazz Records releases something that doesn't leave your turntable (or iPod) for weeks after you first buy it. Right now there's no escaping Subway. If you're ever in London then be sure to hit Soul Jazz's wallet-emptying shop Sounds of The Universe.

Right One

2009-07-10T12:29:00.000-07:00

Like most of humanity, I'm bored by vampires. Yet Let The Right One In is so elegant and artful it's worth diving into the genre once more. It's probably the most quiet vampire movie ever made. And one of the best. If you have a chance, check it out. Director Tomas Alfredson maintains an atmosphere of tension in the penultimate scene that rivals Michael Haneke's best work. Alfredson has a better sense of humor . . .

Bonus points for naming the movie after a Morrissey b-side.

Share That Beat

2009-06-26T09:28:00.000-07:00

The best track.

Francis Bacon, Real Friend

2009-06-18T18:34:00.000-07:00

There is a knockout exhibition of Francis Bacon at The Met that must be seen if you are in NYC this summer. The paintings he did of George Dyer (above) are so emotionally satisfying you'll find yourself lingering longer then you ever have in a museum. Even his self portraits (below) are mesmerizing.
Also worth checking out is the movie Love is the Devil with Daniel Craig as George Dyer. Derek Jacobi is uncanny (and campy) as Bacon. It may have been a TV movie made for the BBC (and only available in 4x3 on DVD right now) but it plays like the real deal.

Polly Jean Harvey, Light of the World

2009-03-28T21:42:00.000-07:00

PJ Harvey's strong new track, "Black Hearted Love", with John Parish on some serious guitar, is out now. The unreliable Chapman Brothers, who occassionally do good work, directed the official video but, sadly, it doesn't do the song justice. So instead check out when Parish and a barefoot Polly did Leno.

"I want to take you, I want to take you to a place I know . . ."

Close Encounters

2009-02-05T16:09:00.000-08:00

Werner Herzog is on a roll, not counting the Rescue Dawn disaster. Encounters at the End of the World is a must-see movie he made about Antarctica. It's beautiful and extraordinary (not to mention funny) and it will change your life a little.

I Can Feel It

2009-01-01T20:09:00.000-08:00

The Breeders' Mountain Battles is my favorite album released in 2008. Kim Deal is forever.

And here's the band shopping for inspiration in Dayton, Ohio back in December 2007.

Risky Business is A Great Movie

2008-12-20T04:54:00.000-08:00

An unbeatable combination of Prince's "D.M.S.R." and Rebecca De Mornay.

Photographer of the Year

2008-11-29T04:17:00.000-08:00

As a gift to someone last year I gave a calendar featuring images shot by Julius Shulman and I've been confronted with those images (posted to the side of a refrigerator) on a daily basis throughout 2008. The angles and clear lines he gets in almost every shot are ideals to strive for, not only in the photography of architecture.

Prior to the publication of his enormous book by Taschen in 2007, there was a summary article about him in Metropolis that sums things up nicely.

Buddy Art

2008-10-18T16:14:00.000-07:00

Gilbert and George have been partners since 1967, residing in the same house in London's East End and creating some of the most brilliant art I've ever seen. A great exhibition of their work is on view now thru January 11, 2009, at the Brooklyn Museum. A must!

MBV vs. EARS

2008-09-26T18:52:00.000-07:00

Photo by Kurt W. Sawilla

My Bloody Valentine @ Roseland was worth any damage my body may have sustained. Even with ear plugs begrudgingly placed in my ears, Kevin Shields' beautifully frayed music connected me to here knows when and I don't think I'll ever forget it.

Paris

2008-07-26T09:20:00.000-07:00

"Good Americans, when they die, they go to Paris."

- Thomas Gold Appleton

Incredibly, I had been to Weehawken hundreds of times but never to Paris until last month and I'm still trying to process how beautiful it is. The hotel I stayed at, Hotel du Petit Moulin, was made over from an old boulangerie (bakery) with charm to spare. I'll be back. Check out Edmund White's take on things.

Lights & Music

2008-05-15T00:01:00.000-07:00

Just got back from a great time at the Cut Copy gig at the always charming Bowery Ballroom and our night is still on fire! The new album is a must for our collective 2008 soundtrack. Best Australian band since the Bee Gees.

Kubrick, Out of this World

2008-04-05T16:20:00.000-07:00

For years I had images from 2001: A Space Odyssey in my head, absorbed through a certain cultural osmosis. Having finally seen the whole thing from start to finish in mind-blowingly clear high definition recently I can't find enough words for how extraordinary it is. The black monolith is the single best representation of "other" ever depicted in a movie. This interview with Stanley Kubrick from 1969 further illuminates his unparalleled talent:

Dr. Strangelove was a particularly word-oriented film, whereas 2001 seemed to be a total breakaway from what you'd done before.

Yes, I feel it was. Strangelove was a film where much of its impact hinged on the dialogue, the mode of expression, the euphemisms employed. As a result, it's a picture that is largely destroyed in translation or dubbing. 2001, on the other hand, is basically a visual, nonverbal experience. It avoids intellectual verbalization and reaches the viewer's subconscious in a way that is essentially poetic and philosophic. The film thus becomes a subjective experience which hits the viewer at an inner level of consciousness, just as music does, or painting.

Actually, film operates on a level much closer to music and to painting than to the printed word, and, of course, movies present the opportunity to convey complex concepts and abstractions without the traditional reliance on words. I think that 2001, like music, succeeds in short-circuiting the rigid surface cultural blocks that shackle our consciousness to narrowly limited areas of experience and is able to cut directly through to areas of emotional comprehension. In two hours and forty minutes of film there are only forty minutes of dialogue.

I think one of the areas where 2001 succeeds is in stimulating thoughts about man's destiny and role in the universe in the minds of people who in the normal course of their lives would never have considered such matters. Here again, you've got the resemblance to music; an Alabama truck driver, whose views in every other respect would be extremely narrow, is able to listen to a Beatles record on the same level of appreciation and perception as a young Cambridge intellectual, because their emotions and subconscious are far more similar than their intellects. The common bond is their subconscious emotional reaction; and I think that a film which can communicate on this level can have a more profound spectrum of impact than any form of traditional verbal communication.

The problem with movies is that since the talkies the film industry has historically been conservative and word-oriented. The three-act play has been the model. It's time to abandon the conventional view of the movie as an extension of the three-act play. Too many people over thirty are still word-oriented rather than picture-oriented.

For example, at one point in 2001 Dr. Floyd is asked where he's going and he replies, "I'm going to Clavius," which is a lunar crater. Following that statement you have more than fifteen shots of Floyd's spacecraft approaching and landing on the moon, but one critic expressed confusion because she thought Floyd's destination was a planet named Clavius. Young people, on the other hand, who are more visually oriented due to their new television environment, had no such problems. Kids all know we went to the moon. When you ask how they know they say, "Because we saw it."

So you have the problem that some people are only listening and not really paying attention with their eyes. Film is not theater -- and until that basic lesson is learned I'm afraid we're going to be shackled to the past and miss some of the greatest potentialities of the medium.

Although 2001 dealt with the first human contact with an alien civilization, we never did actually see an alien, though you communicated through the monoliths an experience of alien beings.

From the very outset of work on the film we all discussed means of photographically depicting an extraterrestrial creature in a manner that would be as mind-boggling as the being itself. And it soon became apparent that you cannot imagine the unimaginable. All you can do is try to represent it in an artistic manner that will convey something of its quality. That's why we settled on the black monolith -- which is, of course, in itself something of a Jungian archetype, and also a pretty fair example of "minimal art."

Isn't a basic problem with science fiction films that alien life always looks like some Creature from the Black Lagoon, a plastic rubber monster?

Yes, and that's one of the reasons we stayed away from the depiction of biological entities, aside from the fact that truly advanced beings would probably have shed the chrysalis of a biological form at one stage of their evolution. You cannot design a biological entity that doesn't look either overly humanoid or like the traditional Bug-Eyed Monster of pulp science fiction.

Some critics have detected in HAL's wheedling voice an undertone of homosexuality. Was that intended?

No. I think it's become something of a parlor game for some people to read that kind of thing into everything they encounter. HAL was a "straight" computer.

Why was the computer more emotional than the human beings?

This was a point that seemed to fascinate some negative critics, who felt that it was a failing of this section of the film that there was more interest in HAL than in the astronauts. In fact, of course, the computer is the central character of this segment of the story. If HAL had been a human being, it would have been obvious to everyone that he had the best part, and was the most interesting character; he took all the initiatives, and all the problems related to and were caused by him.

Some critics seemed to feel that because we were successful in making a voice, a camera lens, and a light come alive as a character this necessarily meant that the human characters failed dramatically. In fact, I believe that Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood, the astronauts, reacted appropriately and realistically to their circumstances. One of the things we were trying to convey in this part of the film is the reality of a world populated -- as ours soon will be -- by machine entities who have as much, or more, intelligence as human beings, and who have the same emotional potentialities in their personalities as human beings. We wanted to stimulate people to think what it would be like to share a planet with such creatures.

In the specific case of HAL, he had an acute emotional crisis because he could not accept evidence of his own fallibility. The idea of neurotic computers is not uncommon -- most advanced computer theorists believe that once you have a computer which is more intelligent than man and capable of learning by experience, it's inevitable that it will develop an equivalent range of emotional reactions -- fear, love, hate, envy, etc. Such a machine could eventually become as incomprehensible as a human being, and could, of course, have a nervous breakdown -- as HAL did in the film.

In the novel the black monolith found by curious man- apes three million years ago does explicit things which it doesn't do in the film. In the movie, it has an apparent catalytic effect which enables the ape to discover how to use a bone as a weapon-tool. In the novel, the slab becomes milky and luminous and we're told it's a testing and teaching device used by higher intelligences to determine if the apes are worth helping. Was that in the original screenplay? When was it cut out of the film?

Yes, it was in the original treatment but I eventually decided that to depict the monolith in such an explicit manner would be to run the risk of making it appear no more than an advanced television teaching machine. You can get away with something so literal in print, but I felt that we could create a far more powerful and magical effect by representing it as we did in the film.

Do you feel that the novel, written so explicitly, in some way diminishes the mysterious aspect of the film?

I think it gives you the opportunity of seeing two attempts in two different mediums, print and film, to express the same basic concept and story. In both cases, of course, the treatment must accommodate to the necessities of the medium. I think that the divergencies between the two works are interesting. Actually, it was an unprecedented situation for someone to do an essentially original literary work based on glimpses and segments of a film he had not yet seen in its entirety. In fact, nobody saw the film in its final form until eight days before we held the first press screening in April 1968, and the first time I saw the film completed with a proper soundtrack was one week before it opened. I completed the portion of the film in which we used actors in June 1966 and from then until the first week of March 1968 I spent most of my time working on the 205 special effects shots. The final shot was actually cut into the negative at M-G-M's Hollywood studios only days before the film was ready to open. There was nothing intentional about the fact that the film wasn't shown until the last minute. It just wasn't finished.

Why did you cut scenes from the film after it opened?

I always try to look at a completed film as if I had never seen it before. I usually have several weeks to run the film, alone and with audiences. Only in this way can you judge length. I've always done precisely that with my previous films; for example, after a screening of Dr. Strangelove I cut out a final scene in which the Russians and Americans in the War Room engage in a free-for-all fight with custard pies. I decided it was farce and not consistent with the satiric tone of the rest of the film. So there was nothing unusual about the cutting I did on 2001, except for the eleventh-hour way in which I had to do it.

Bubbly

2008-03-07T15:46:00.000-08:00

Photo by Kurt W. Sawilla

There are few things in life more enjoyable than a bottle of this.

Obama '08

2008-02-01T19:54:00.000-08:00

Vote for someone you believe in.

Erykah, My Love

2008-01-25T19:33:00.000-08:00

Eryka's new incredibly addictive single, "Honey", out now.

Listen here.

Watch here.

Barnett Newman's Mind-Blowing Restraint

2008-01-11T18:39:00.000-08:00

Yve-Alain Boise on Barnett Newman in ArtForum:
"Throughout his life, Newman destroyed much of what he made: A work had to wholly satisfy him or it was banished, especially after he had completed what he often called his "first" painting, Onement I, 1948. This was how he managed to withstand the harsh treatment he received. He had to be confident in his own greatness; his confidence was his armor. When he finally received a measure of the attention he deserved, he was often urged by supporters to produce more work. He politely responded that he did not care for redundancies. Though Newman's oeuvre looms large, it is quantitatively minute: At last count I tallied 122 paintings, 88 drawings, 41 prints, 6 sculptures, 1 multiple (silk screen on Plexiglas), and 1 architectural model. That's all. In the current context of market-driven overproduction, one can only admire such restraint."

Can't Get Enough

2007-12-29T15:57:00.000-08:00

The
Not
to
be
Missed
Album
of
2007 . . .

. . . and
the
incredible
band
who
made
it.

Jean Prouve and the Chair from Heaven

2007-12-04T17:37:00.000-08:00

The greatest object in the universe this week is the Standard Chair designed by Jean Prouve in 1934.

The World Needs Susan Sontag

2007-11-22T10:24:00.000-08:00

Not a day goes by when I don't hear her:

“John, it’s the beginning mind I embrace."

“Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration’s shove or society’s kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It’s all about paying attention. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. John, stay eager.”

"Do something, John. Do something. Do something."

"John: Although none of the rules for becoming more alive is valid, it is healthy to keep on formulating them."

And finally, of course:
"Sanity is a cozy lie."

Jeanne Moreau is a Goddess

2007-11-05T20:09:00.000-08:00

French movie director Louis Malle speaking about "Elevator to the Gallows", a sublime movie from 1958:
From the beginning we literally invented what people remember of the film today – the character of Jeanne Moreau. It hardly existed in the book. When you think of it, she is not really necessary to the plot. She just floats around trying to find her lover in Paris. But we made her part of the plot at the end. Once we started working on the adaptation things went very fast, and we signed Jeanne Moreau . . .

Now people often say, “You discovered Jeanne Moreau.” I didn’t - she was already a star then, a B movie star. Also, she was recognized as the prime stage actress of her generation. She had been at the Comédie Française; she had worked with Gérard Philippe. But in films she had never come true, except in those B movie thrillers with Jean Gabin, where her roles were not terribly interesting. But she was a commercial plus. In fact, the distributor insisted that we cast Jeanne Moreau . . . suddenly they discovered that she was potentially a big film star. Up until then people used to say that although she was a great actress, and very sexy, she was simply not photogenic.

I had this great cameraman, Henri Decaë, whom I knew from the early Melville films. I, as well as those in the New Wave, admired Decaë tremendously. He started me, he started Chabrol, and then Truffaut, and then a number of others.
When we started shooting, the first scenes we did with Jeanne Moreau were in the streets, on the Champs-Élysées. We had the camera in a baby carriage, and she had no light – it was black and white of course; we were using this new fast film,
the Tri-X, which serious film makers thought too grainy. We did several long tracking shots of Jeanne Moreau...she was lit only by the windows of the Champs-Élysées. That had never been done. Cameramen would have forced her to wear a lot of make-up and they would put a lot of light on her because, supposedly, her face was not photogenic.

That first week there was a rebellion of the technicians at the lab after they had seen the dailies. They went to the producer and said, “You must not let Malle and Decaë destroy Jeanne Moreau.” They were horrified. But when Elevator was released, suddenly something of Jeanne Moreau’s essential qualities came out: she could be almost ugly and then ten seconds later she would turn her face and would be incredibly attractive. But she would be herself. And, of course, it was confirmed by The Lovers, which I did almost right after. So I contributed to making her into a star, but she had already made something like seven or eight films.

HOUSE OF BLONDES

2007-10-30T19:20:00.000-07:00

Please go here if you are looking for the House of Blondes website.

HOUSE OF BLONDES

2007-09-12T16:34:00.000-07:00

Please go here if you're looking for the House of Blondes website.