The Ramones- Pet Sematary
This song was written for the film adaptation of the Stephen King book of the same name and appears on the Ramones 1989 album Brain Drain.
Cinefamily on Fairfax is showing Pet Sematary as a double feature with The Oracle on Friday 10/23/15.
Also, if you are at Hollywood Forever for their Dia de los Muertos celebration on Saturday make sure to check out Johnny Ramone’s grave located near the mausoleum.
Beirut- Elephant Gun
This video for Beirut’s song from 2007 was directed by Alma Har’el who also directed the famous Sigur Rós video Fjögur píanó which stars Shia LeBeouf (seen below). She also directed the documentary film Bombay Beach which takes place in the community near the Salton Sea.
Beirut are playing 10/8/15 at the Hollywood Palladium
Repo Man Trailer
Repo Man (1984), Alex Cox’s film about aliens, car repossession, and punk rock takes place in Los Angeles in the 1980′s and stars Emilio Estevez and Harry Dean Stanton. It received good reviews at the time of its release and has since become a cult classic. The punk rock soundtrack is great too and includes tracks like the one below- Black Flag’s TV Party, as well as songs from Fear, Iggy Pop and Circle Jerks, who make an appearance in the film.
Alex Cox went on to make Sid and Nancy and Straight to Hell (which features Joe Strummer and Courtney Love) .
Repo Man is playing at the Regent Theater on Sunday (3/15) with a performance afterwards by Harry Dean Stanton and a band that includes Harper Simon.
Halloween III- Happy Halloween Silver Shamrock
I love this clip from 1982’s Halloween III, the only Halloween film without Michael Myers.
Hurry home kids, it’s almost time! Happy Halloween!
Cutie and the Boxer- Official Trailer
Currently on Netflix streaming and nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary, Cutie and the Boxer is a glimpse into the lives of two artists, Ushio Shinohara and his wife Noriko.
Noriko was only a 19-year old art student when she met 41-year old artist Ushio, and they have remained together ever since. While the film presents Noriko’s sacrifices and frustrations within the relationship, it also shows the process that goes into the artistic work itself for each of them. Now, forty years later, she is showing her own work and emerging from the shadow of her husband’s career. It’s a fascinating, intimate portrait of the couple.
This is a good interview with Noriko.
Len Lye’s A Colour Box (1935)
If you missed the show at Roberts & Tilton, here is one of the works from it. This piece, by New Zealand artist Len Lye, was the first direct film screened to a general audience. Set to La Belle Créole by Don Baretto and his Cuban Orchestra, it was made by painting directly on the celluloid.
I first discovered Agnés Varda through the documentary, The Beaches of Agnés. She’s an incredible person, who at 85 (80 in the film), is still making films. This unique presentation of her life is both compelling and inspiring.
Check out some of her work at LACMA’s Agnés Varda in Californialand.
Image from Agnés Varda in Californialand at LACMA
Tonight (12/7) at 7:30pm, LIONS LOVE (…AND LIES) is playing at LACMA along with Black Panthers.
Info from LACMA’s website for this event:
Agnès Varda’s first-ever American feature film was shot while she was living in Los Angeles with husband Jacques Demy (his own U.S. debut, Model Shop, was released the same year). LIONS LOVE (…AND LIES) finds Warhol superstar Viva joined by Hair cocreators James Rado and Gerome Ragni as the trio, in various states of undress, play host to visiting cinéma vérité luminary Shirley Clarke (The Cool World, Portrait of Jason) in a Hollywood bungalow. Sunsoaked Southern California counterculture, New York bohemia, and Left Bank abandon all intermingle in this film about a film. LIONS LOVE (…AND LIES) graced the debut cover of Warhol’s Interview magazine and is Varda’s anarchic paean to the age of aquarius and Tinseltown transience with guest spots by everyone from Eddie Constantine to Peter Bogdanovich. This is an encore screening of the brand-new, LACMA-supported restoration of this film—in partnership with the Annenberg Foundation and The Film Foundation—which is also the inspiration for the filmmaker’s LACMA exhibit Agnès Varda in Californialand.
Also screening, Black Panthers (1969, 30 minutes, color, DCP)—another film newly restored by LACMA, the Annenberg Foundation and The Film Foundation—and Varda’s American debut: a powerful document of the eponymous Oakland movement’s efforts to free activist Huey Newton.
Some interesting facts about Viva– aside from being one of the stars of this film and Warhol’s movies, she also had small parts in Paris, Texas; Midnight Cowboy; and Play It Again, Sam. Both her daughters, Alexandra Auder and Gaby Hoffman, are actresses as well. She currently lives and paints in Palm Springs.
Definitely two films worth checking out. If you miss this screening, clips from the LIONS LOVE(…AND LIES) are playing in the exhibition as well.
Clip from Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
This is such a great movie and perfect for Thanksgiving. It was nominated for several Academy Awards, including best picture, and won Edmund Gwenn an Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. All the performances are wonderful, especially Natalie Wood as the little girl who doesn’t believe in Santa.
Some interesting trivia about the film via IMDB:
- They used the actual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade from 1946 in the film.
- Unbeknownst to most parade watchers, Edmund Gwenn played Santa Claus in the actual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade held November 28, 1946. He fulfilled the duties of most parade Santas, including addressing the crowd from the marquee of Macy’s after the parade was over. He was introduced to the crowd by actor Philip Tonge (he played Mr. Shellhammer in the movie) and he later unveiled the mechanical Christmas display windows to the accompaniment of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker Suite.” This gesture symbolized the opening of the Christmas shopping season at the store.
- According to Natalie Wood’s biographer, during the shoot, the young actress was convinced that Edmund Gwenn was actually Santa Claus (by all accounts, Gwenn was a very good-natured man on the set). It wasn’t until Wood saw him out of costume at the wrap party that she realized he wasn’t Santa.
- Received a ‘B’ rating (morally objectionable in part) from the highly influential Legion of Decency because Maureen O’Hara played a divorcée.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Images from the film L’Enfer by Henri-Georges Clouzot
From the press release for The End of the Night:
LACE is proud to continue the collaboration with Ceci N’est Pas… in presenting The End of the Night, organized by curator Martha Kirszenbaum and designed by Exhibition Designer Marianne Zamecznik, is a bold group exhibition exploring the impact of French filmmaker, Henri-Georges Clouzot and his unfinished 1963-1964 film, L’Enfer, on notions of abstraction, the kinetic, and optical illusions in contemporary French art. For this exhibition, Kirszenbaum has invited five artists whose works reflect on Clouzot’s pictorial and sound experimentation and respond to his visual and sensorial imagination: a historical figure, Julio Le Parc, and four emerging artists, Florian & Michael Quistrebert, Isabelle Cornaro and Pierre-Laurent Cassière. Kirszenbaum’s project is a double exhibition – the other half taking place at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, emphasizing a similarly themed exploration of the work of Los Angeles experimental filmmaker Kenneth Anger.
When you see the clips from Clouzot’s film at this show, it is easy to see how it could inspire an exhibition. His use of spinning lights to create the illusion of changes in the actress’s face is one of the more mesmerizing aspects of the film.
One of the standouts from the show is the double channel projection video installation, The Eighth Sphere, by Florian & Michael Quistrebert. The two projections of geometrical shapes merge and separate creating interesting effects.
Also at LACE tonight (11/14) there is a town hall forum that is open to the public.