My cousin Andrew told me about a funny video called The Legend of Old Gregg. After a bit of sifting on youtube, I found plenty of references to the show, some clipped-out highlights, and many people misspelled the name as “Old Greg”. With some patience, I was able to piece together and watch the whole episode. It was so funny, I tracked down the entire British sitcom called “The Mighty Boosh.”

The show follows the exploits of two English blokes: Howard Moon (played by Julian Barrett) and and Vince Noir (played by Noel Fielding). Their everyday lives as zookeepers, storeowners, and musicians is interrupted every episode by the most strange and funny situations and the most bizarre characters imaginable:

• Old Gregg the scaly, man-fish
• The Spirit of Jazz
• Betamax (yes, the non-VHS tape format)
• The Crack Fox
• Black Frost, a creature who freezes people solid with smoke that comes out of his… um, you’ll have to watch the show…
• The Hitcher, a strange green man with a giant thumb wearing a doughnut over one eye.
• A giant wad of bubble gum
• A horrible demon in the form of a nice old Nana

In the tradition of Monty Python (and inexpensive movie production) you will see Julian Barrett and Noel Fielding appear in multiple roles in each episode.

After watching all three seasons I can tell you that The Mighty Boosh is awesome. I haven’t laughed so hard in a long time. If there were more fun shows like this on TV instead of all the bullshit crime/courtroom/medical drama, I’d be tempted to actually start watching TV again.

To get your feet wet, head over to The Mighty Boosh YouTube channel and poke around. It won’t take long before the Power of the Crimp compels you.

All three seasons of The Mighty Boosh have been released on DVD, and it’s on Netflix too, so check it out, and make sure to catch The Legend of Old Gregg from Season Two. It’s even funnier if you follow Howard Moon and Vince Noir through their adventures from the beginning. Then when you get to the third season and watch “The Power of the Crimp” you’ll totally get it.

Crimping

Noel Fielding and Julian Barrett developed a synchronized-a-cappella-scat-song format they call a Crimp.  It was just this little thing they would do during their shows, but it eventually got popular enough that they gave it a name in the season three episode, The Power of the Crimp.

You can read more about Crimping here on Wikipedia.

The Future Sailors Tour

As I write this, The Mighty Boosh are touring the united states, but earlier sections of the tour have been recorded and you can catch them on this DVD called Thank Boosh It’s Friday.

The Documentary of the Future Sailors Tour

And if that’s not enough, someone is doing a movie of the Mighty Boosh on Tour called Journey of the Childmen:

The Sound Unseen 2010 International Film and Music Festival

This year’s Sound Unseen International simply must be seen. Five days of film and music starting today, June 2nd and runs through the 6th.

Cool bands. Cool films. Cool films about cool band. Cool films about cool bands with cool band members hanging out in the lobby, scarfing all the free beer and apps.

I fear this much coolness in Minnesota in such a short period of time might cause it to snow in June. Good thing they’re holding it in Duluth.

A search for Sound Unseen online was frustrating. At first blush you might think the website soundunseen.com has been mostly abandoned. That’s until you discover the correct website is http://soundunseenduluth.com. They also have the requisite Facebook and Twitter pages. Or you can download the program and music schedules right here:

Sound Unseen 2010 Program

Sound Unseen 2010 Film and Music Schedule

World Premiere of Low Film Experience

A hypercool event going on at this year’s Sound Unseen is the world premiere screening of an experimental film by Philip Harder. It’s a kind of documentary about the local band Low…. wait a minute. It really isn’t a documentary… Well, they seem to sum it up best as a “Low Experience”:

Low Film by Phil Harder

Since Low’s debut in 1994 Philip Harder has been shooting cinematic 16mm films for the band: a boat on frozen Lake Superior, Baron Von Raschke with red balloons, a room collapsing in slow motion around the band… Several music videos and film shorts later all Harder’s raw footage of Low, 1994 to 2010 has been re-edited into a film with original on-camera sounds. Rarities, banned clips, and unfinished Low films were unearthed. This is not a compilation, not a documentary- but it definitely documents the Low experience. Perhaps Low’s version of a musical- of sorts… June 6th, closing night of Sound Unseen Duluth, NorShor Theater will once again be turned over to cinema for the “Low Movie”: a sneak preview in Low’s hometown! Maybe you can help us find a title for the film.
Just accept that it’s going to be amazing, and you might want to take the better part of next week off from work to contemplate it after you see experience it.

7:30PM Sunday, June 6th.

SACRED HEART MUSIC CENTER
201 West 4th Street
Duluth, MN 55806-2719
(218) 723-1895

Beyond Low – The Gala After-Party of Coolness (+4)

After the show, (around 9:30) make sure to check out the gala after-party:

Following the film, please join us at the Historic Greysolon Plaza – this time downstairs in their unique Moorish Room. Festival guests will be treated to a feast for the eyes courtesy of featured director/filmmaker Philip Harder’s film/art installation, in addition to complimentary appetizers from Black Woods Catering and free Schell’s beer and drink specials all evening. Entertainment for the evening comes from a band that has helped define the Twin Cities music scene, with 10 studio releases and over 16 years under their belt, we are more than proud to announce our special musical guests of the evening: The Honeydogs.

9:30PM Sunday, June 6th.

Greysolon Moorish Room
231 East Superior Street
Duluth, MN 55802-2165

Ticket Info

Ticket info for all events is here.

For the Low film/gala event, I’m told prices are $20for Film and Gala, $15 for Gala Only, and $10 for Film Only

A Warning To Those Pure Of Heart

The program doesn’t warn you, but be careful – Gay Witch Abortion’s music KILLS angels and incapacitates those pure of heart. You just might not be evil/wicked/cool enough to listen to them. If you think you are, then you probably aren’t.

I was just a kid during the 80′s, but I remember the ever-present threat of Global Thermonuclear War. The Government “Star Wars” programs. Books about how to create a fallout shelter in your backyard. The “Tornado” drills in school, that we all knew weren’t just for tornadoes.

So while movies like “War Games” and “Red Dawn” are period pieces that hold a certain charm for me, I have to admit they won’t work for everyone. The same goes for Warner Bros new release: The Watchmen. The story is an alternate history, dated in the 80′s. (The Watchmen was released in 86-87) The “alternate” part is that superheros rise to power and help America to win The Vietnam War. President Richard Nixon is elected for a third term, and a comedian is killed in New York…

The Good

The movie intro is great, and I appreciated the quick overview of the alternate history of how the Watchmen came to be, and then came to Not be. (All backed by Bob Dylan’s ‘The Times They are A Changin.’)

While the movie’s alternative time period didn’t seem as surreal as the real 80′s were, it was very distinct, and gave the movie an other-worldly feel. More than one person mentioned a feeling reminiscent of Blade Runner.

The heroes were fallible, to a fault. The good and bad are not clear-cut, and I love that. Too many years of Disney handing us Good and Evil on clearly-labeled trays so we know who to like and who to hate; you won’t find that in the Watchmen. The characters Rorschach (Played by Jackie Earle Haley) and the Comedian (Played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan) are as deep and as real as any superheros I’ve ever seen on the big screen.

Disjointedness aside, the plot was great.  Big.  Great Big. Earth-shatteringly earth shattering. Once it gets rolling, its a Juggernaut, and it isn’t boring. The mythos of the Watchmen was well thought out, and it shows.

The Bad

The first third of the movie is a mystery. The mystery is, “What the hell is this movie about?”  The movie’s dyslexic buildup made me wonder if it was a political drama, superhero saga, mystery, or soap opera. The movie didn’t try too hard to pander to those unfamiliar with the mythos, the philosophy was, “Start the movie and the audience will catch up eventually!”

The music was trying too hard. Way too hard. I never thought I’d say this because I’ve said the opposite so many times but here is a movie that would have benefited by replacing some of the songs with musical score. I guess they couldn’t get Danny Elfman so they bought up the rights to every song played in the 80′s except “Don’t Fear the Reaper” by Blue Oyster Cult. And they might have played that one while I was in the bathroom.

And if I *never* hear the accursed song “Hallelujah” again, it will be too soon. I don’t know who decided to include this song, much less why they thought it might work over a sex scene, but people in the theatre were laughing, myself included.

And if I *never* **ever** see an uncircumcised blue penis again, it will be too soon.

The Twitter Review

#MovieReview The Watchmen is good. A great character study, even if you don’t like superheros. Soundtrack tries too hard. The 80s were cool

Prediction

I’m predicting that the 80′s gigantic earrings, neon pastel colors, and Nagel prints will make a comeback because of this film.

In about 2 minutes, the 48 hour film fest awards for Minneapolis will go live, and you can see this years winners. I just got back from the awards ceremony, and I can give you a 2-minute heads up that “Birthmarked for Death” took best Picture, and a handful of other awards.

The group team Chiaroscuro was up against had 3 films go to the finals, so it’s no surprise that our effort “Fort World” didn’t make it to finals, but it’s nothing to be ashamed of, we had some great company and great competition.

…next time….

Art Is Resistance
-Zero

Tonight, Team Chiaroscuro got to view their latest work of art on the big screen. Our entry for the 48-Hour Film Festival premiered tonight, alongside a gaggle of some well-done works.

It was a crazy weekend.

Friday 7:30PM

The genre we drew was ‘Film de Femme’ which aside from being a blatantly sexist genre, is also pretty open to interpretation. The prop was a fish, of all things, and the line of dialog was “You look very familiar”.

The group assembled over pizza and beer, and began brainstorming ideas. We tossed around a lot of great ideas, and I think it was the wide-openness of the genre that made it difficult for us to dial in on any particular one. It might have been easier to start with more limitations, but by 9:30 we had a plot roughed out. As part of the script-writing team, I helped to flush out a script by midnight, a heartbreaking work of staggering genius called ‘Fort World’.

Saturday Fucking Early AM

I joined the team (late: typical) and began designing the set, which was the interior of FortWorld. I swear, when we got done, it looked like the inside of the bottle from “I Dream Of Jeannie” After shooting started, I headed back home and helped my friend Reid Rejsa put together a few foley sound effects. I actually had time for a nap before the gang came over laden with video. Things were going swimmingly. Josh and I sat down to pick through some music, and “The Sarahs” began slicing and dicing the video…

…when the power went out.

Saturday 10:00 PM

I called the power company, and was informed that power wouldn’t likely be restored for 4 hours. So the Sarahs pulled the video workstation, and took it to their place. I went to bed eventually, around 3:30 AM, and still powerless.

Sunday 8:00 AM

Still no power. I pulled my entire goddamned studio apart and fit it into the trunk of a 96 Saturn, and lugged the whole thing over to Josh’s place. While I put the foley FX into place, Josh and Colin came up with some quirky musical pieces to slip in. A little touchup on the audio, and we pressed a DVD around 5 on Sunday, leaving us 2.5 hours to turn it in.

Tonight:

Like I said, tonight we got to see FortWorld on the big screen, and I was pretty impressed. Team Chiaroscuro certainly has made some progress since our 2006 submission; this year’s entry was much more ambitious. Aside from the power outage, there were no major technical glitches.

The whole project makes me want to do more small film projects, but one thing at a time. I already have one live performance to focus on… plenty of time for video later…

Art Is Resistance
-Zero

Food for thought for movie graphic designers, regarding the Trajan font:

Art Is Resistance
-Zero

Don’t believe the mediocre rating on imdb.com, Gabriel is a pretty amazing film. Great storyline, and fantastic set design, on a tight budget and tighter schedule no less. Ah well, what movie doesn’t cry about budget restrictions when they *only* have two-hundred grand to make a feature film? Ha! In Australia, no less.

The story takes place in Purgatory, where a group of angels is sent from heaven to battle against a group of demons for dominance of this middle-ground. The angel Gabriel arrives only to find that the angels who came before him are doing Very Poorly: those who haven’t succumbed to their pathetic humanity have disappeared completely, and several powerful demons are in complete control of Purgatory.

Fans of Gothic films like Blade Runner and The Crow should definitely see this film. And filmmakers will want to watch the “behind the scenes” on the DVD, which are Real Behind The Scenes, and not Production Crew Kissing The Director’s Ass.

It was great to see the guy who wrote the music score for the film whine about getting ONLY ten grand and a year to do it! They should have talked to me, I scored a feature film in a month, on a budget one-ten-thousandth of his!

Art Is Resistance
-Zero

Blame Xtina. After hearing the never-ending thrashing my friends and I have given to the movie Bloodrayne and its director Uwe Boll, I finally decided that she shouldn’t take our word for it, and experience it for herself firsthand.

So I paid a couple bucks to rent Bloodrayne, The Directors Cut (James suggested it might be better than the original, “Maybe they put the plot back in!” he suggested, which did not make me more enthusiastic to see it…) It took some coaxing on my part (and some bad television) to make Xtina agree to watch it. I was laughing before I loaded the disk into the player.

Oh, the horror! The horrible accents, I mean. Michael Madsen sounded like he was from New York!

Oh the horrible acting! Kristanna Loken wasn’t even able to act stoic!

Oh, the Bad Bad Bad ADR!

Oh, the horrible delivery of lines that sounded like they were read off pieces of paper handed to the actor one word at a time!

Oh, MEATLOAF ADAY!

Oh the plot LEAPS of faith that were Jet-Propelled-Across-Time-And-Relative-Dimensions-In-Space!

…and yet…a strange thing happened.

I did not find it as bad as I did at the theater. Not remotely. Somehow, watching Bloodrayne on a TV set instead of a big screen, it seemed more like a bad episode of Xena Warrior Princess. Reviewing it as a B-Movie instead of a $10 Blockbuster, put it in a more acceptable perspective.

The movie had some large-scale sweeping shots, clearly done from a helicopter. There were some large scenes of mounted cavalry, and decent sets. It had Ben Kingsly in it. (Who I had just seen the previous day as “The Rabbi” in the movie Lucky Number Sleven ) Hell, he wasn’t even half bad. The CG was B-Movie quality, and the props were ridiculously B-Movie funny.

Don’t get me wrong; there’s a reason the movies initial release was cut from 2500 theaters down to 985. There is a reason it went from release to cable in less than a year, bypassing HBO entirely.

The reason is that it sucked. As a real, Theater-Release-Type movie,  Bloodrayne sucked. As a botched movie based on a video-game that no one on the movie crew had ever heard of or bothered to investigate before filming, Bloodrayne sucked.

But hand to Dog, as a B-Movie, its fine. If it cost 50K to make, and went straight to DVD I never would have been so hard on it.

After the movie, we watched the bonus feature, “Dinner with Uwe Boll” where a couple ass-kissing fans got to eat dinner and speak with the man, the myth, the legend himself, Uwe Boll. After watching that, I think I understand Uwe better. I think he knows what he is, and he isn’t deluded about the kinds of movies he is making. He knows that the public views him as a hack filmmaker, cutting as many corners as possible, including hiring prostitutes as actors, because they are cheap and will do Anything, compared to people in the Actors Guild.

Uwe Boll also explained why all his previous movies sucked; the writers. And that plural is no mistake, because Uwe Boll sends scripts through several different people for re-re-rewriting, which no doubt contributes to his disjointed and convoluted plotlines that end up getting cut from the final version of the film.

But don’t worry, for his upcoming masterpiece, “Postal” he will be writing the script himself.

And keep your eyes out for Bloodrayne II (set in the Wild West!) which went straight to DVD, and the rumored Bloodrayne III which might actually have something to do with video game it was based on.

Oh, the horror…

Art Is Resistance
-Zero

Stop reading this now, and go see Fido!

Imagine an alternate reality where a comet passes by the Earth and space dust descends on the planet, bringing the dead back to life as your classic mindless zombies, with the desire for human flesh.

Done to death, right?

Not like this!

This film is a zombidy mashup of “Terminator”, “Shaun of the Dead” and “Leave it to Beaver”, and Extremely well-set in the 1950s.

The zombies are controlled by electrical collars made by the giant corporation “Zombicon”. The collars turn the walking dead into passive robots who obey simple orders, and are sold as household slaves. One family gets a zombie (played by Billy Connolly), who has more personality then the dad played by Dylan Baker. The son (Played by K’Sun Ray) befriends the zombie and names him Fido. There is even some interesting chemistry between the zombie and the wife (Played excellently by Carrie-Anne Moss.)

It was more funny than anything I’ve seen in some time now, and a handful of zombie-gore, but not the least bit frightening. An absolute surprise, because I wouldn’t have picked the movie based on the cover (and I *didn’t*…) but I give it a 10 of 10.

Art Is Resistance
-Zero

My expectations for Hitman were average. I didn’t like the video game; staring at the back of some one’s shaved and tattooed head was not gratifying, and the game was nearly uncontrollable. I almost garroted myself more than once trying to play it.

So I was pleased to see the Vin-Diesel-produced movie merely paid homage to the game. There were a couple funny references to the game, the best being when Agent 47 interrupts a couple kids playing the Hitman video game.

Anyway, Hitman was a hit. Better than many of the James Bond films. The plot was good. The fact that there was a plot was better. The main character was played by Timothy Olyphant, and he did a great job of being stoic. The other acting was good to average. Fight scenes were mostly well choreographed, except the train fight scene when everyone agrees to put down guns and draw swords in order to ‘die with some dignity…’ Hmmph.

Unlike the James Bond films, I noticed there was little product placement in the Hitman film. Sobe, Audi, and McDonalds notwithstanding, I never saw a closeup of his cellphone or wristwatch.

And the hot female lead Nika, played by Olga Kurylenko does a realistic job as well, and is obligatorily, scantily-clad. In a daring first for male-lead-shooter-films, the hero does NOT have a sex scene with the female lead. I was disappointed to see him treat her poorly at first.

Short version:

Take a James Bond film with a good plot, remove the sex scene, remove the main characters hair and sense of humor (possibly the entire personality), and remove the product placement, add a Scotch with Ice instead of a Vodka Martiti, and some great locations in Russia, Istanbul and Bulgaria, then you’re got the recipe for Hitman.

Art Is Resistance
-Zero