Change Your Image
brendanP
Reviews
Sewing Circle (1992)
must be seen to be believed
Sewing Circle provides one of those rare truly morbid curiosities. From Richard Kern, the master of over the top exploitation Super-8 adventures comes this gem of mutilation and pain endurance. The whole thing is probably no longer than eight minutes and consists of two body piercers sewing another womans vagina shut. Really, that's all that happens. It looks pretty painful, but at the same time it is so damn fascinating that you can't take your eyes off it. Kern is very good at doing this sort of thing to his viewers. Somehow I found this less disturbing then Kern's other short which features a transvestite getting simultaneously plooked (if you don't know what "plooked" means then you really should pick up Frank Zappa's Thing Fish album) by a girl with a strap-on while giving head to another strap-on equiped lady.
Porn Star: The Legend of Ron Jeremy (2001)
the ultimate tragic hero
admittedly, Ron Jeremy is not to everyone's taste. He's fat, hairy, sloppy, and pretty sleazy when he wants to be. However, what sets him apart from the rest of the porn world is the fact that he sees porn as his way into the big time, as his way into hollywood. this documentary, a splendid one at that, allows the audience a glimps into the man who is the hedgehog (or the woodchuck, as he has also been called). what we find is just an average guy - someone who wants a wife and kids, a steady job making "real" movies, and a life away from porn. The picture one receives of ron is that of the tragic hero - a man who is a legend in his own time, known to millions of fans and frat boys everywhere, yet yearns only for the simple joys of life. i found myself feeling sorry for him. i just want him to be happy. after all, he just looks so cuddly.
Alien Resurrection (1997)
the problem lies with Whedon
alright, here we go. Resurection would have received much more critical aclaim had Joss Whedon not written it. This film pulled together some of the greatest living character actors, as well as Marc Caro's brilliant artistic design. The problem is that Whedon wrote this movie like another episode of "Buffy." Yeah, for those of you who don't know, Joss Whedon is the writer of TV's Buffy the Vampire Slayer - which should be all the explanation you need as to why this film did not succeed. My point is that the script functioned on the TV show principle, in which the audience needs to be constantly reminded that this is just fantasy, and therefore they should not take it too seriously. Held back by what can be mercifully regarded as an awful script, Resurection is a blemish on Jeunet's career - through no fault of his own. To Whedon's credit, I did enjoy the scene where ***SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER, READ NO FURTHER IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE FILM*** the baby alien bites Brad Dourif's head off. for some reason, that was really satisfying....
Tetsuo (1989)
this makes it clear: black and white is just plain creepier
As aptly demonstrated in recent times by films such as Pi and Begotten (to say nothing of Lynch's Eraserhead - which is in a class all its own) Tetsuo succeeds in bringing forth the most profound and desturbing of all emotions: imagination. Shooting in black and white, be it for economic or stylistic reasons, for one reason or another manages to consistently tantilize and captivate the viewer. By limited what is provided to the viewer (in this i am refering to color) the director and cinematographer force upon the viewer the burden of imagination. The viewer must now take it upon themselves to imagine what blood really looks like, not just what rasberry syrup and corn starch looks like. The color, the phenomenological content of the "thing" that is blood is now drilled into the mind of the viewer in a way that is simply unattainable with color production.
This is why Tetsuo succeeds in creating such a dramatic and forceful impact upon the pysche of the viewer. By withholding the security and simplicity of color (and i am speaking in terms of the cognicent ability of the audience) Tetsuo makes imperative the reaction of the audience to "see" color in the image and imagine (notice how closely those two words and etemologically related) the reality of gore and blood and dismemberment.
An outstanding achievement on many levels.
Sonic Youth Feat. Lydia Lunch: Death Valley 69 (1986)
sonic youth + richard kern = good stuff
Death Valley '69 is a video for the Sonic Youth song of the same name. The song origionally appeared on the "Bad Moon Rising" album from way back in 1985, at about the same time as Kern was making those Super 8 gross-out masterpieces starring the lovely "Lung Leg" - I swear I'm not making this up - who later graced the cover of the SY album "EVOL." There is a great gorey sequence in the DV '69 music video that looks like pieces of liver or stomach (or something...) plopted down in front of a very crudly "killed" Steve Shelley (SY's drummer at the time the video was shot). Kern's very distinctive Super 8 style (gittery, high contrast, EXTREMELY low budget, and super gross-out) that was - and I know this is hard to believe - really, really popular in the New York art scene in the eighties is captured here in it's full glory. Check out "Hardcore," a collection of Kern's mid-eighties Super 8 porno(?) movies. Anyway, it's a Sonic Youth music video that is collected on the "Screaming Fields of Sonic Love" music video compilation thingy. There you have it....
Weatherman '69 (1989)
post-punk cover artist makes good.....something
Raymond Pettibon, before beginning his illustrious film career, worked as the cover artist for SST records in LA in the early-mid eighties. Drawing for bands such as Meat Puppets and the Minutemen (for whom Mike Watt, one of Weatherman's stars, was the bassist), and producing numerous zines (if you don't know what a "zine" is, you may as well stop reading these comments) out of the LA area eventually led Pettibon to jump into the exciting world of "film-making." I guess I should say this up front, since no one else has written any reviews yet, that these films are pretty weird. All the shots look like one-take-madness type of productions ( and there are some parts where the actors are clearly reading their lines from a card some stage hand is holding off to the side) but for as technically wanting as they may be, they are amazingly entertaining. This film also stars all four members of Sonic Youth as members of a pseudo-Marxist terrorist group who are trying to overthrow The Man, or something. Weatherman '69 is shot on video, not DV or any of that new-fangled fancy stuff, I mean like camcorders. It's extremely amateurish, but a lot of fun in a very pot smoke-hazed way, which is probably your best bet for getting through the length of the film (it looks like it was for the cast and crew). Thanks for listening.....
Blue (1993)
a final masterpiece
Jarman's "Blue," a feature consisting entirely of a blue screen with voice-overs, has succeeded in annoying viewers with its seemingly uninventive approach to the cinematic personal narative. As so much of what we have come to consider "good" filmaking relies primarily on our sense of sight and our ability to absorb and process hundreds of CGI critters flashing before our eyes, it is easy to forget that a "good film" relies as much if not more so on the story than it does on the visuals.
Jarman's story is one that does not need visuals to support it. Reflecting upon his life in the face of his rapidly approaching death, Jarman's memories and meditations offer the viewer (listener, really) a window into the soul of a director who is losing the most important sense he could posses: his sight. Blue was the last color available to him before AIDS related complications robbed him of his sight. As he stands before death and stares it straight in the face, Jarman's writings put forth a suprising feeling of calmness, as he has accepted his own finitude and shares his meditations with us in this, his last masterpiece.