“The whole point of viewing something critically is the shock of recognition that comes from the intersubjectity of two unique sensibilities — the critic’s (or, ideally, every reader’s) and the artist’s. If the reader is merely a supplicant before the art, he’s doing neither himself nor the artist any favors. If he respects the artist and himself, the reader (the critic!) brings his own worldview, his own philosophical orientation to bear on the art and, in the event, perfection and idolatry ought rightly to be looked on with some suspicion. Heretical as this sounds, appreciation could be made even more pungent and challenging when there’s some friction between the reader’s perceptions and the artist’s expression.”

 - Gary Groth, “A Bill of Goods (or ‘Why The Death of Criticism Couldn’t Have Come At a Worse Time’)”

“Lots of first-rate literary criticism has been written by people who are monolingual, or who read lots of novels but almost no poems, or who have no political concerns, or who are philosophically illiterate, or who have little sense of what happened in history. Good criticism is a matter of bouncing some of the books you have read off the rest of the books you have read. The greater number of books you have read, and the more various they are, the likelier it is that the criticism you write will be of interest. But there is no natural order of priority, nor is there any set of methodological precepts, that should guide your decisions about which books to read first. All you can do is follow your nose.”

 - Richard Rorty, “Looking Back at Literary Theory”

“Most of the feckless, listless quality of today’s art can be blamed on its drive to break out of a tradition while, irrationally, hewing to the square, boxed-in shape and gemlike inertia of an old, densely wrought European masterpiece.”

“Masterpiece art, reminiscent of the enameled tobacco humidors and wooden lawn ponies bought at white elephant auctions decades ago, has come to dominate the overpopulated arts of TV and movies. The three sins of white elephant art (1) frame the action with an all-over pattern, (2) install every event, character, situation in a frieze of continuities, and (3) treat every inch of the screen and film as a potential area for prizeworthy creativity.”

“The common quality or defect which unites apparently divergent artists like Antonioni, Truffaut, Richardson is fear, a fear of the potential life, rudeness, and outrageousness of a film. Coupled with their storage vault of self-awareness and knowledge of film history, this fear produces an incessant wakefulness.”

“Movies have always been suspiciously addicted to termite-art tendencies. Good work usually arises where the creators […] seem to have no ambitions towards gilt culture but are involved in a kind of squandering-beaverish endeavor that isn’t anywhere or for anything. A peculiar fact about termite- tapeworm-fungus-moss art is that it goes always forward eating its own boundaries, and, likely as not, leaves nothing in its path other than the signs of eager, industrious, unkempt activity.“

“[Kurosawa’s Ikiru] sums up much of what a termite art aims at - buglike immersion in a small area without point or aim, and, over all, concentration on nailing down one moment without glamorizing it, but forgetting this accomplishment as soon as it has been passed; the feeling that all is expendable, that it can be chopped up and flung down in a different arrangement without ruin.”

- Manny Farber, “White Elephant Art and Termite Art” (1962)

“[F]ilms are just loose scaffoldings, jungle gym swings that allow you to go off in a dozen different directions in your head. Contraptions to think with, murky, messy things. Fascinating sometimes, even often, but rarely perfect. Who needs perfection? – that is the question. […] think about that moment in film theory, late ‘60s to early ‘80s maybe, when all we craved were films with cracks, ruptures and transgressions, films of contradiction, films that tear themselves apart to reveal ideological monsters, whether this film be directed by Jesús Franco or John Ford … those were the days.”

“Imperfect cinema, bad cinema, cannot be corralled down to one kind, one type, one genre of cinema. Today’s whole emphasis on B cinema, exploitation cinema, paracinema, on underground or outlaw cinema, on porno and gorno and all the rest of it, has only one radical point as far as I am concerned: it’s the beachhead, the wedge, that is meant to free you, cure you the viewer, of your in-bred cultural attachment to normative values (the professional film, the well-made film, and so on), and ultimately to the ideal of perfection. That’s why, speaking personally, I ran to Edgar Ulmer, to Tod Browning, to Samuel Fuller, and to so many others of that uncategorisable ilk: to be cured, cured of society, cured of taste, which is a prison – taste, cultivation, whether it is of A cinema or B cinema or Z cinema, is the thing that has to be destroyed in you, exorcised back to hell. It’s hard work, it takes a lifetime, I can assure you: I’m not there yet. It’s not dark yet, but I’m getting there.

“And today this therapy, this exorcism cure, is terribly hard. For today we are living in a Masterpiece culture, a veritable Global Masterpiece Theatre. It’s part of the Criterion Effect that has swamped the DVD market, and hence film culture at large.”

“These days, what I think of as the prison-house of taste has clamped down on most of us – paradoxically so, in the ostensibly wide-open days of the Internet. We are furiously streamed, niched towards what we already know we want to watch: the directors, the genres, the carefully labeled cult-films. And so there are literally thousands of films on those DVD shelves that you or I will never watch.”

 - Adrian Martin, “The World Ten Times Over: Ongoing Adventures in Pulp Poetry” (2010)

<< Curtis x Laing x Bourriaud x Bey x more (Part 1: Diagnosis)
<< Curtis x Laing x Bourriaud x Bey x more (Part 2: Remedy?)

This post has been a very very very long time coming. It’s a little embarrassing. Nine and a half months since I posted Part 2 and one year exactly since I posted Part 1.

Largely, the reason for that is that it’s spiraled out of control. The core ideas of what began a year ago as an attempt to briefly sketch some corollaries between a film I’d recently watched and three books I’d recently read quickly grew to become an anchor point for my own personal philosophy of art and social change, and to which much of what I thought about on a daily basis could be related back to.

Initially I had intended for this “third and final part” to describe contemporary tendencies similar to those described in Part 2. Giving anything close to a comprehensive survey, however, would be impossible.

And so rather than delaying this posting any further by attempting to make it “complete” (and winding up producing something so long that it wouldn’t be read by anyone anyway) I’ve decided instead to treat it as a series of notes, and to break it up into smaller, more digestible chunks, which I’ll be posting periodically.

If you recall, this entire series was kicked off by my reading a post by blogger Momus, in which he offered a series of notes drawing parallels between Adam Curtis’ condemnations of game theory in The Trap and Nicolas Bourriaud’s acclamations of socially-based art in Relational Aesthetics. In the conversation that followed Momus’ post, he cited one art critic’s criticism of the relational art trend: “Relational aesthetics, once probing and complex, is becoming a cul-de-sac of fun effects, momentary experiences, and comfy playhouses.” It sounds like a convincing condemnation. But one commenter offers an even more convincing rebuttal: “And the problem is… what, exactly? That people are drawing inspiration from the immediate pleasures of being alive rather than floating around in arid abstractions that yield even more sickly offspring? ‘Probing’ and ‘complex’ my foot–those with an allegiance to life’s joys are the ones I trust first; the rest have to make their case, no matter how clever. Get your empty sleeves out of my pho, you gaggle of ghosts!”

This dialog offers a demonstration of three of the primary obstacles preventing contemporary art from being a productive, utopian force:

1) its fixation on content and concept to the detriment of considering more tangible effects on the world at large (I’ll get to that later),

2) the inevitability of its commodification (as Bourriaud himself writes, “wherever art proposes ‘life possibilities,’ [’Integrated World Capitalism’] presents us with the bill” (RA p95).),

and 3) its obsession with originality. Granted utmost importance in the art world, this obsession becomes extremely harmful when it comes to effecting anything outside of it. If it’s a good idea, what’s wrong with doing it again? If it can make the world a better place, why ignore it simply because it’s been done before?

And that’s not the only reason RA won’t save the world. The Radical Culture Research Collective presents a far more biting critique of Relational Aesthetics than those commonly made from within the art world:

“Precisely formulated, relational aesthetics represents the liberalization of the avant-garde project of radical transformation. […] While we would defend relational art from its conservative and reactionary critics, we would also insist that it not come to stand in for the radical project it falls short of – and indeed refuses. Undoubtedly, the avant-garde tradition continues to be transformed by its own process of self-critique. But it does not give up the radical, macro-historical aim of a real world beyond capitalist relations. And it doesn’t settle for the experience of gallery simulations.

“It’s not that experiments in forms and models of sociability are not needed today – they certainly are. But to be politically relevant and effective, such experiments need to be grounded in (or at least actively linked to) social movements and struggles. (And there is no social progress without contestation and struggle: this for us is a basic materialist truth that makes any blanket refusal of “conflict” problematic.) As a gallery-based game, relational practices are cut off by an institutional divide from those who could use them. Who are the consumers of relational art? The cultural élite of the dominant classes, primarily, supplemented by the socially ambitious layers of a de-classed general public* […] In general, this audience does not tend to overlap with the people actively attempting to generate pressure for deep social change. There are exceptions, we know. But this is how the disruptive utopian energies that do exist in relational art are managed and kept within tolerable limits: the social separations, stratifications and (self-)selections of the art system enact a liberalization – that is, a de-radicalization – of social desire.”

*The subject of why galleries and museums tend to be so class-specific is worthy of an entirely separate post. Two footnotes worth briefly mentioning here, however: 1. The phenomena of “free days” at museums - most notably, MOMA - is neither ahistorical nor simply a generous gesture. In 1969, the Art Workers Coalition was successful in pressuring MOMA and several other museums to implement such free days in an attempt to broaden access (race and class were chief concerns of the group, both in terms of access and representation). Some museums have since rolled back this policy. MOMA is today able to continue operating “free Fridays” only under the sponsorship of Target. 2. Similarly, when Bourriaud co-founded the Palais de Tokyo museum in Paris, he insisted that the operating hours be noon to midnight. The reason for this, of course, was to broaden access to working people whose hours likely conflicted with those of most museums, which tend to close in the early evening or late afternoon.

In the next part of this post, before moving on, I’ll stop for a moment to define the “the avant-garde tradition” and “project of radical transformation” referred to in The RCRC’s critique - the antecedents to Relational Aesthetics that may help to point toward current manifestations and future trajectories of social art.

“When the world is sick / can’t no one be well / but I dreamt we was all beautiful and strong”
- A Silver Mt. Zion, “God Bless Our Dead Marines”

“In our sick society everyone is sick. A human being averages 4,000 orgasms per lifetime. Do not turn off this pulsating motor of joy and life energy. The bioelectric charge and discharge produced by the genital embrace causes the orgasmic reflex - supremely pleasurable muscular contractions. Subjection to social disciplines may cause gastric ulcers, respiratory, coronary, and vascular diseases.
“Comrade lovers, for your health’s sake, fuck freely. 4,000 liberating orgasms in every woman’s and man’s life are 4,000 explosions of liberated life energy. Only by liberating both love and labor can we create a self-regulating workers’ society.
“Body tissue deprived of life energy turns cancerous. Cancer is the hysteria of cells condemned to death. Cancer and fascism are closely related. Fascism is the frenzy of sexual cripples. The swastika owes its magnetism to being a symbol of two bodies locked in genital embrace. It all stems from a longing for love.
“Comrades, make love joyously and without fear. Let the current flow sweetly up your spine. Let your hips roll and your mouth water. Saliva is good. Let us reactivate the natural vibrations within ourselves and society. Let the current stream sweetly through your muscles. Feel free to tremble and cry. Let yourself enjoy your body.
“As revolutionaries whose revolution renounces love, we feel very uncomfortable. What is happening to the revolution?”
- W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism

“Sexuality is something that we ourselves create. It is our own creation, and much more than the discovery of a secret side of our desire. We have to understand that with our desires go new forms of relationships, new forms of love, new forms of creation. Sex is not a fatality; it’s a possibility for creative life.”
- Michel Foucault

“Every pleasure which emancipates itself from the exchange-value takes on subversive features.”
- Theodor Adorno

Before watching for myself, I had only heard three things about The Lawnmower Man:
1) It has nothing to do with the Steven King story.
2) Somebody has virtual reality sex.
3) It’s not a good movie.

After watching the film, although I can confirm those first two points, I have to disagree emphatically with the last one. Obviously, I understand why someone would hate this film. I especially understand why a cinephile or a filmmaker would hate this film. And by most conceivable definitions of the word, it is by no means a “good” movie. It’s cliched, hackneyed, pretentious, portentous, over-dramatic, convoluted, and silly. And yet, not only is it incredibly entertaining, but it’s a total mindfuck. Honestly, this may be one of my new favorite movies of all time.

I think the most apt comparison I could make would be Zardoz (and not only because both star James Bond actors). Like Zardoz, The Lawnmower Man transcends standards of “good” and “bad.” It’s not merely “so bad it’s good,” but rather, half “so bad it’s amazing” and half just plain actually amazing - except usually those two halves are occurring simultaneously. I’ll spare you the schematic of my thoughts. In essence, while watching the film it’s a good idea to completely throw any ideas about intentionality out the window.

The plot amounts to what is essentially a poor man’s Videodrome, with a decent helping of Flowers for Algernon and Carrie thrown in for good measure. I can’t really elaborate on that without giving too much away, but when you watch it, you’ll know exactly what I mean, because the plot points are pretty much lifted directly from those three stories. None of the characters ever really rise above the level of generic archetypes, and whereas in most films that would most definitely be a negative thing, in this film the characters are so much generic archetypes that they become hilarious caricatures, and it becomes endlessly entertaining to watch just how cliche they’ll be next. It’s obvious that the writers paid a lot more attention to the ideas they were trying to get across than to character or narrative believability. And that’s great! Because let’s be honest, Videodrome ain’t exactly hailed for its great character development either, if you know what I mean.

And those ideas are laid on thick. Reeeaaaal thick. But (again, just as in Zardoz) that doesn’t mean they’re not interesting. Despite the bluntness, heavy-handedness, and melodrama, there’s a lot to sink your teeth into intellectually. Some familiar cyberpunk themes of the dangers of the posthuman and the blurring of boundaries between cyberspace and ‘meatspace’ are explored, as well as religious and sexual themes. One blogger interprets the primary theme of the film as being “the aspiration to become information,” and I think that’s pretty spot on. I’m sure if I was better versed in critical theory and transhumanism, I’d be able to have a field day analyzing this film to death.

Lastly, I couldn’t allow myself to finish this review without at least some mention of the RIDICULOUS special effects. Obviously, the N64-quality CGI seems incredibly dated - laughably so - but not only does it add to the nostalgic cyberpunk feel of the film, it’s also often legitimately creepy and unsettling in a way that fancier, more realistic graphics could never accomplish, thus adding to both the “so bad it’s amazing” and actually amazing factors. Not to mention how the complete lack of realism in the virtual world makes for a much more interesting contrast between that world and the real world.

Now I’m just looking forward to seeing Lawnmower Man 2: Jobe’s War!

And photographed me! And I ate a panini!

She’s starting a little series on her blog of short, 1 or 2 question interviews with friends. I had the pleasure of being the first one. She asked me about the really embarrassing short stories I wrote in my early teens and how they relate to my filmmaking now. You can read my answer here.

You should also take a look around the rest of Dea’s blog (and her other one). She writes about being an activist in the coal mines of West Virginia, but also about poetry, and zines, and diners, and punk rock, and other things.

The utter absurdity of Nobuhiko Obayashi’s Hausu (House) is something that’s difficult to adequately convey in writing. Perhaps more than any film I’ve ever seen, it is truly something that needs to be seen to be believed.

Let’s get the basics out of the way: It is a horror-comedy. The plot concerns Oshare, a Japanese schoolgirl, who goes with six of her friends to stay at her aunt’s house in the country. The house, however, is haunted, and kills off the girls one by one.

If you’ve heard anything at all about the film, you’ve likely heard about its special effects: girls being devoured by pianos, electrocuted by killer lampshades, and crushed to death inside psychedelic, color-changing grandfather clocks - all with the help of some very primitive, pre-digital video effects. There is no attempt to make these deaths (or anything else in the film) seem plausible or convincing in the least. Rather, the effects are used to create ridiculous neon phantasmagorias of floating severed body parts, blood-spewing cat heads, and dancing plastic skeletons. The word “ridiculous” must be stressed here. There is no better description of the film as a whole than that one word.

Even more so than its outrageous special effects, however, what is most astonishing about the film is its totally idiosyncratic editing style. Obayashi seems to have a film grammar all his own. He piles an entire century worth of cinematic visual shortcuts on top of each other with dizzying speed. Superimpositions, freeze frames, split screens, color filters, vignetted scene insets, flashbacks, montages, instant replays, and iris wipes abound (so many iris wipes!); and in what would likely be a first for a narrative film, it seems as if cross-fades are used more frequently than straight cuts (although I haven’t counted). This film language stew, as it were, serves as a sort of farcical, parodic deconstruction of cinematic convention. Without ever once resorting to airy, intellectualized pretension, Obayashi utilizes the techniques of Artuad’s “Theatre of Cruelty” in service of the Brechtian aim of shocking the audience out of their involvement in the film.

More astounding still, its worth remembering the year this film was produced. While it occasionally has the feel of an amateur cutting loose with a toolkit of Final Cut filters, the film pre-dates the mainstream use of non-linear digital editing systems by about 15 years, and pre-dates YouTube by almost 30. We can know for certain, then, that each effect and transition was carefully planned and painstakingly executed. And it shows. Whereas a similar overload of cliched effects in an average YouTube video usually has the effect of feeling banal and unfunny, Obayashi’s use of even the most uninspired and stock filmic convention is always startling in its preposterousness and inappropriateness. And with his marrying of wide-eyed, playful film magic to fast-paced, ADHD-prone zaniness, the film looks backward to the infancy of cinema just as much as it anticipates MTV, YouTube, and iMovie. In this sense, Hausu is the missing link between Melies and Trecartin.

Before directing Hausu, his feature-length debut, Obayashi was well known in Japan’s late ’60s avant-garde and surrealist counter-culture (alongside Shuji Terayama and Toshio Matsumoto) as a maker of experimental shorts, and later, as a television commercial director. These two things help to explain not only the film’s ocular overload aesthetic, but also its glossy, superficial sheen and unremitting use of soft-focus. These elements only push the absurdity to new heights, with the contrast between campy, Halloween-ish horror and girly, teenage schmaltz providing some truly funny moments (the unusual turn at the end of the film, in which a moral about love is unexpectedly and ham-fistedly imparted, is especially bizarre).

And with all my intellectualizing and historicizing, let’s not forget how hilarious the film is. Released the same year as The Kentucky Fried Movie, in the midst of Monty Python mania, and an entire decade before Evil Dead II, it stands on its own as a brilliant, groundbreaking, wholly original, and distinctly Japanese take on both the anarchic and horror comedy genres. And whereas many Western examples of those genres rely substantially on narrative and dialog for their humor, Hausu’s humor is overwhelmingly visual (indeed, often formalistic), delivering sight gag after sight gag at a pace so quick it’s hard to catch ones breath. To be blunt, it’s one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen. And because of it’s extreme density, it welcomes repeated viewings.

After all this praising, it’s a shame to have to admit that Hausu has never had a DVD release in the U.S. Thankfully its cult status has ensured it plenty of internet distribution and fan-made subtitles. If you want to see the film, you can find it here.

For better or worse, I suppose it’s telling of our culture that it’s now possible for a film to achieve “cult” status before it’s even been released. Of course, in the era of the long tail, that term has become marketing lingo with quite a bit of cache. Withoutabox, for instance, a website that allows filmmakers to submit to festivals online, lists “cult” as one of many “genres” (alongside Surreal, Neo-noir, and Dramedy) for filmmakers to choose from in creating a fact sheet for their films. In such a context, the term seems preposterous. How can something be cult if no one’s seen it yet? Films we now consider cult classics - Eraserhead, Pink Flamingos, Rubin & Ed - were not initially conceived of as such. They were not premeditated efforts to appeal to not-so-distinctive coteries of pre-fab underground culture connoisseurs. Rather, they were the singular visions of people with singular ideas. I’m wary of the rise of self-conscious cult cinema.

But rest assured that the “real thing” still exists. There still exists the phenomenon of original, often bizarre movies, coming seemingly from nowhere, gaining buzz and popularity via word of mouth, and being discovered by small groups of people who are truly enamored with them. And just as has been the case with once obscure cultural relics of the past, the internet has had the delightful effect of broadening and accelerating that process astronomically. The story of After Last Season is also the story of how the internet is drastically reshaping outsider, underground, and cult culture at large.

This past March, a very odd trailer popped up on the Apple website. It seemed to be a random patchwork of scenes - mostly of people in sparse rooms having mundane conversations about locations, interspersed with simplistic CGI of geometric shapes. The description was little help in filling in any of the gigantic gaps in the film’s story left by the trailer: “The end of another season has brought more than the usual change in temperature to the residents of a city. As they go through some tragic events, the residents, and especially a group of medical students, must reevaluate their lives and face new questions.”

Word quickly spread throughout the tubes. Most were perplexed. “I’ve watched this at least ten times in the past hour, just trying to figure out why it exists,” wrote Lindsay Robertson from Videogum, “From the cardboard MRI machine, to the ’special effects,’ to the people, to the chair, to the sentences, this trailer is truly unfathomable. Like the Songsmith commercial, it seems like it could only have been made in a parallel universe that irony forgot.” A Facebook group was formed. VH1’s Best Week Ever blog preemptively declared it “The Worst Movie Trailer of 2009.” Alternate Takes, the cinephile website known for posting lengthy, in-depth analyses about art films, devoted an intelligent, 5,000+ word roundtable discussion to the two-minute-long trailer. And all across the blogosphere, writers sloppily smushed together the names of familiar films and directors with odd choices of adjectives and stale metaphors for outsider-ness in winding run-on sentences that attempted to convey their bewildered astonishment. “It’s like Todd Haynes lost his mind after Safe and was hired to direct a series of cable access sci-fi infomercials,” wrote IndieWire. “It’s like Eyes Wide Shut by way of David Lynch doing Brecht on acid. Otherwise, it’s Ed Wood looking like Orson Welles,” wrote one Filmmaker Magazine blog commenter. “Some sort of Dogme ‘95 parody?” guessed Videogum. (My reference points? The Room, Samuel Becket, Primer, Hal Hartley, The Boss of It All, Miranda July and The Science of Sleep but without all the colors.)

Theories abounded. Some assumed it was a post-modern art film, rife with straight-faced irony and intentional badness. Many thought it might be a hoax or a prank. The most common hypothesis was that it was a viral marketing campaign for a different film. (Somehow, somebody got the idea that it might be part of a campaign for Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are.) But then details started emerging. Knox Road snagged an interview with a flustered Mark Region, the film’s director, who said that Apple’s classification as a comedy was inaccurate. “The movie is more like a Hitchcock film, dark and mysterious.” He also revealed that it cost $5 million to produce, most of the money coming from local investors. Then lead actor Jason Kulas sent an email to FilmDrunk, spilling the beans on some production process details: “To use time, and film stock efficiently, a number of times Mark didn’t shoot the scene, but rather just individual lines from various scenes, out-of-sequence, in close-up.  He planned to assemble these shots in editing to form the scene.  Mark seemed to already have the entire film visually in his head, right down to what shots, angles, masters, and close-ups would be in a scene. […] This allowed him to do things like have 1 setup, like a close-up on one actor, and he’d have them perform just line 18 from scene 80, then line 12 from scene 20, etc.  With a little attention to remaining footage, this approach let him pack dialog lines into every last bit of film before retiring that reel, and without having to move the camera or lights.”

Full interviews with both Region and Kulas in Filmmaker Magazine shed even more light. Region revealed himself as a real-estate business manager living in Tewkesbury, Massachusetts with no prior film-making experience. When asked what films have influenced him, he replied, “I have probably seen all the movies that people have seen — films from some of the blockbusters to less well-known films. I like them all. Dumb and Dumber from the Farrelly Brothers – that’s funny. And then the Indiana Jones movies. (Laughs). ” It was now abundantly clear that After Last Season was a true work of outsider art.

The film was slated to be released in four cities (Lancaster, CA; North Aurora, IL; Rochester, NY; and Austin, TX) on June 5th, and there were people who were exited to be there. People made pilgrimages from cities several hours away. John Campbell, creator of the webcomic Pictures For Sad Children, made a t-shirt to wear to the theater:

Reviews began pouring in. Filling in some of the details, Rodney Perkins of Twitchfilm wrote, “Unbelievably, the film’s trailer, including the editing, is representative of the entire movie. […] All the scenes are shot in people’s rooms or unfurnished spaces with no effort make them resemble the locations that they are supposed to represent. Impromptu props made of cardboard and other discarded material are everywhere. […] Conversations come across as alternating statements with no relation to each other. […] Some scenes are perceptibly out-of-focus. There is a pervasive, muffled background noise. Scenes come and go with no continuity or explanation. Conversations often cutaway to shots of furniture and other items for no reason. A large part of the movie consists of the previously mentioned computer graphics, which are brutally crude. Although these graphics fit into the story, film leans heavily on them to pad out the 93 minute running time. Thus, the parade of colored circles, cylinders, birds, and fish tends to goes on and on as if the film went on pause and a screen saver kicked in.” He ends his review by stating, “This review has expended hundreds of words in an attempt to convey the nature of After the Last Season but this is a film that requires direct experience to comprehend. Even then, its mysteries will not completely reveal themselves.”

Film Monthly made comparisons to Hal Hartley and wrote, “[it’s] nothing less than a complete deconstruction of fiction films. […] After Last Season is what I imagine an autistic person might see when watching a film: stripped down to its absolute basics, there’s a lot of talking and some special effects, then more talking and some credits, and that’s it.”

Hammer to Nail wrote, “After Last Season is as bad as it looks, but its badness is of such a quizzical sort that it transcends mere incompetence. It is formally engaging, because it is so formally incorrect. […] To watch the film is to take in the vision of someone with a severe case of disconnection: what is most consistently striking about the film is that the gap between conception and realization is irreparably wide.”

One fan interviewed four of his friends in the parking lot of the theater after just having seen it. One of them described it as “a murder mystery that takes place in the architecture of the mind,” and went on to comment, “Mike very astutely said that most of the movie was set in this one room and by the end of the movie he still had no idea what the geography of that room actually was […] You’re missing out on a singular experience - I don’t think I will ever forget this movie.”

It would seem that those who merely dismiss the film or it’s trailer as “bad” are making a gross oversimplification. Certainly, the work of Henry Darger, Martin Ramirez, or The Shaggs could be simply called “bad” by conventional standards of artistry. But of course, they are much more complex than that. Whether entirely his intention or not, it appears that Mark Region has created a baffling and wholly idiosyncratic film - one that deserves serious consideration as a work of art. Of course, this is all conjecture… for now. After Last Season is set to be released on DVD in two days, and I for one plan on buying a copy. I’ve been let down by cult film hype many times before. But for some reason, this time I don’t think I’ll be disappointed.

The film can (supposedly) be ordered either from the official site or on Amazon.

Special thanks to Olivia for alerting me to the 8th wonder of the modern world that is the After Last Season trailer.

Right on the heels (sort of) of my post this June on “new modes of storytelling” (in film and otherwise), comes the announcement of this talk, open to the public, taking place at The New School on September 22…

“Contemporary filmmakers tell their stories using the latest tools, including everything from digital cameras to computer animation. The way they tell their stories has been shaped by the rise of short-form and user-generated content, video games, and virtual worlds that invite audience participation. At the same time, audiences are expanding their role by making films that are just one piece of a larger project. Come hear a panel discussion exploring storytelling in film today. The panel is part of “New Visions for Film and Media Arts,” a new series that presents leaders from film and digital media production, financing, and distribution.

Panelists include Thomas Allen Harris, filmmaker and founder of Chimpanzee Productions, a company dedicated to producing unique videos on the human condition; Jay Randolph, activist and video blogger aka Jay Smooth; Nina Paley, filmmaker and former cartoonist and Kenneth Hung, socially conscious, multi-media artist. Moderated by Kelly DeVine, Artistic Director of the Global Peace Film Festival and consultant to Tribeca Film Institute’s web-based initiative Reframe.”

I happen to have class that night, but I’m considering skipping to attend. It’s hard to tell whether it’s worth it or not. Hmmm…

Absolutely RIDICULOUS. Sometimes you read about cult classic films, or “so-bad-it’s-good” movies, and you think that there’s no way it could possibly live up to the hype. But no matter what you’ve read about Zardoz, it’s pretty much guaranteed that it will surpass your expectations. Written and directed by John Boorman, it was his first film after the immensely successful Deliverance, and he was pretty much given a million dollars and allowed to do whatever he wanted. The result is totally fucking insane - an overblown, campy, self-indulgent, dystopian sci-fi epic that kind of comes off like the most brilliant high school drama club production ever made. Or as Roger Ebert described it, “a trip into a future that seems ruled by perpetually stoned set decorators.”

Sean Connery as a future cave man running around in a bright red thong, a ponytail and a mustache is only the beginning. There’s also life-essence-stealing catatonic makeout orgies, silly telepathic finger wiggling sessions, and a giant stone Greek god head that spews rifles and proclaims “guns are good, the penis is evil.” Boorman crams so many ideas into the film that it usually just winds up being convoluted and confusing, and things move so quickly that it often feels like a summary for a much longer film (much in the same way as Lynch’s Dune). Toward the end, especially, the plot gets so complicated and so ludicrous that it’s hard to tell what the fuck is even going on. But no matter how stupid it gets, it’s constantly weird, constantly fascinating, and constantly hilarious. I watched it three times last month. See this movie!!