Tell Me A Different Story

If we can now access anything why do we continue to reach for the same things? 

Three times in one day (here, here, and here) I came across discussions of this thing that keeps bugging me: how the increase in global connectivity is shaping close knit niche markets, especially in film. This is something I saw and invited awhile ago but as this model unfolds I am starting to have some reservations... Is the potential for never seeing anything new, bad, or outside of one's comfort zone a possibility in the new creative market?  If Netflix can whittle down exactly what I like to watch will I ever see something I might not like? Will kids dig around in the trenches of the internet for weirdness? Or will unwatched, unloved, unpopular things be deleted & forgotten? And if we do find one unoccupied corner of culture will it then become the only thing we turn to, perpetuating the niche market cycle?

I recently saw the new Godzilla. At one point during Godzilla I turned around and looked at the light of Mothra bouncing on the wide-eyed faces in the audience. Seeing people engaged in some sort of creative pursuit, whether I like it or not, is thrilling! The communal experience of ideas/creativity (or....lack thereof...) that is experienced when one steps out of their cultural safe space is a vital part of life. It reminds me that there is a world beyond my own where people are telling stories that are not mine, stories that often help me learn, think and act beyond myself. How can anything be accomplished if people continue to only look at the stories that are reflections of themselves? And instantaneous reflections at that... Sure, the emergence of relatable communities is probably good in a lot of ways but is it also helping to build walls of ignorance? Exclusion? Misunderstanding?

Way back last November I interviewed musician/actor/swell guy Will Oldham on my radio show and I asked him about the new era of distinct media platforms and my worry that the collective conscious is going to give way to small clusters of consciousnesses that are being catered/sold to directly. Below is a small excerpt from that live radio interview (my first ever voice/live/phone interview: please be kind young trolls of the internet!). Things discussed: SHAZAM!, Internet Manga, myth making, Lou Reed, timelessness. (Pics from Godzilla, old, new, and ones we wish to forget.)

Deadly Ponies Gang!

On horses, humor & heart.

Dwayne & Clint are best friends living in New Zealand, well meaning deadbeats that have opted for souped up equines instead of souped up cars. Oddly enough I looked up the phrase souped up (because I've never typed it and didn't want to spell it wrong) and some say it has origins in horse racing, a term used to describe steroid injected animals! Ha! Not that these ponies are on drugs exactly...but their riders definitely are! The duo are the subjects of the comedic documentary The Deadly Ponies Gang which is full of stoners, graffiti, rapping cowboys, dentures, horse girls, horse thugs and extreme hilarity & heart.

Clint & Dwayne's "gang" consists of them. And sometimes a young boy who rides a horse and makes pretty stellar cardboard art cars. They idolize a country music rapper who often performs atop a sleek, gorgeous horse. They bring their horses to a beach to pick up chicks. I think there are even gang related tattoos at some point? The documentary mostly revolves around the pursuit of getting toothless Dwayne teeth, a tale that director Zoe McIntosh tells through keen editing, a soft eye and a mellow presence behind the camera that feels respectful & affectionate yet wholly curious of her one-of-a-kind subjects. When I saw this film I remember going through a lot of phases- first wondering if it was some sort of mockumentary, then laughing at the gang, then laughing with the gang, and then ending in a genuine caring for this pair of wayward pony lovers. It is a sweet, funny film that looks at friends creating their own very unique lifestyle while trying to do what all of us are trying to do, to be happy and find love in whatever form it chooses to take.

A free screening of The Deadly Ponies Gang is being presented by Rooftop Films & Industry City at Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City Queens tomorrow (Wednesday July 15th) at 8pm, weather permitting. The director and one of the main subjects will be in attendance too! I don't want to say it's a family film exactly (drugs?)....but it is a film that I think anyone can, and should, easily enjoy.


The Deadly Ponies gang trailer. from Zoe McIntosh on Vimeo.

Analog, Alter, Augment

Old tech, new tech & the moving picture.

The blog has been a lot of listing lately. Mostly it's a function of the fact that my critical thinking ebbs in the muggy, sweaty, sticky Summer months that are upon us but it is also a function of life-related stresses! Hopefully things will fall into place soon and the storms will perpetually echo off the mountains, cooling my brain into a state of thought but until then....here is a list of recent film innovations, events, things that I think are integral to the not so distant futures & pasts of visual storytelling!

1. Mountain App. David OReilly is a visual artist best known for creating the crass interactive fictional videogame in the movie Her, but he's been making visual art for a long time before that. When I read about his new/first app Mountain I was annoyed: a "game" of a mountain simulator where kinda nothing happens? But, after downloading it I now completely get it: it is a prolonged, animated, falsely interactive, extended story that- like a pet- I perpetually project my emotions & understandings onto. The quiet beauty of a spinning rocky mass suspended in some sort of galaxy, changing weather, small events, and the calming white noise of a wind swept atmosphere is hypnotic & beautiful. Supposedly there is an ending to the "game" and there is some vague cosmic statement made by OReilly about each experience being different in the sense that "Everything interacts with itself and everything around it throughout time and space." The assumption that each Mountain is unique is amazing, the personal identification and the use of the phrase "my mountain" that the friends I have using the app are inclined towards makes me think some untapped audience need has been created here.  The app is more like watching a narrative about the life of an animated anthropomorphized habitat, and- like any good hero on screen- it is perfectly making us identify with it: this is a new type of filmmaking. Warning: do not confuse Mountain with Rock Simulator.


🗻 Mountain 🗻 from David OReilly on Vimeo.

2. 3D Projection Mapping. I used to think projection mapping was the same as projection masking but it is not. Masking is when a projector or surface is altered to accommodate an image, like tape put on a projector to mold the picture to a particular architectural element. Projection Mapping is when abnormal surfaces or shapes are projected onto. 3D Projection Mapping is a system of elaborately imaging a structure or space and creating programmed, multi-dimensional seeming projections that are able to (usually) interact precisely to that space.


The creative end of 3D projection mapping really is in its infancy, the content is not particularly artful, often a pure advertisement or dance-like abstraction and EDM (or whatever) seems to be the preferred soundtrack for the medium...but there is intense potential for visual storytelling here!!! Imagine if going to the movies meant sitting in a space in which the whole theater was exquisitely mapped, events unfolding around you? Personally I prefer this to any Oculus Rifting...but maybe it's because, despite the hi-techness of it, there is still a real, communal physicality taking place, a large scale, immersive augmented reality that could maybe be a new movie going experience?



3. Wenders is coming back with 3d! This time a fiction film! Called Everything Will Be Fine! Sheesh....this guy....! After experiencing Pina and his groundbreaking use of 3d- seeing it as a new, beautiful tool to tell a story with as opposed to simply a special effect that sits atop a movie to instill shock & awe- I am beyond excited to see what he does with a narrative...and a narrative in which there is a car crash!!!! Ok...I like some shock & awe: BUT IT WILL PROBABLY BE BREATHTAKING AT LEAST! Also, Fact: Wim Wenders is hotter than Franco!

4. The New Museum is having a panel/book launch for what looks like a great tech-moving-image title, The Emergence of Video Processing Tools. It seems the book charts the co-opting & creation of electronic tools for creative moving image production. And it doesn't seem to be a loose overview of the intersection of art & tech either, the book looks like it ponders larger questions regarding obsolescence, aesthetics, history (manifestos anyone? shudder....), & the distinct communities that evolved during the onset of machine/tool imaging in the 60s & 70s. A resource that thinks about tech art in an art historical and a tech historical sense as opposed to the general/trendy (remember New Aesthetic?) language the genre has been breeding is vital! Maybe I can convince my smalltown library to buy this book, no? The discussion & book launch take place on July 13th at 3pm at The New Museum, NYC.



5. This Friday, the 11th, in Baltimore (and traveling to a city maybe near YOU!) a bunch of the lo-fi, lo-res tech that is mentioned above will be put to use at The Basement Media Fest, being presented by Sight Unseen at The Holy Underground. I have no idea what any of this means but who can resist a description that includes this: COME ENJOY SOME 100 YR OLD TECH IN A STATE OF THE ART CONVERTED BODEGA THEATER.///WARNING/// SUM OF THESE MOVIES FEATURE FLICKERING LIGHT AND RAPIDLY CHANGING MOTION. MAY CAUSE SEIZURES/MOTION SICKNESS. IF YOU HAVE TO SPEW, SPEW IN THIS.



I had this weird feeling the other day about how dated our CGI of now might be in a few decades. Will we look back & laugh (like I do at Titanic )? Will our tools continue to improve? What does the definition of "improve" even look like when we can invent machines that can create things our eyes can't even see? How scientific advancement can inspire, improve, move beyond a human realm of existence, or even just create plain joy will never, ever stop being fascinating to me.

Review for H2N: Who Took Johnny

Who Took Johnny reviewed for Hammer to Nail.

I Don't Want to Grow Up

Two movies that treat adulthood like an unexpected, unwanted deer in the road.  

The main characters of The Disobedient, Leni & Lazar, are children trapped inside of adult bodies and like little kids uncomfortable in clothing they are aching to be naked, writhing their way out of the expectations inherent in growing up. This film is a sprite-ly, dark, conflicting, sexual, road/bike trip through the Serbian countryside as these two childhood friends reunite (at a funeral no less!) and rekindle their twisted, juvenile relationship. The two have that creepy yet sweet madcap dynamic- almost like Belmondo & Anna Karina in Godard's Pierrot Le Fou- that is mesmerizing, disgusting, beautiful and freeing all at once; they disrupt their surroundings, are plagued by impulse and are wholly unhealthy for eachother- much like life itself! It is a hard film to try and capture in words, the actions of the characters speak more than any dialogue...in fact, an older gentleman (whom I read was, fittingly, the host of a popular Serbian children's tv show) acts as a narrator throughout the film, following the two as they eddy around creating their nearly inconsequential paths of destruction and explaining some of the action to the audience like a storybook reader removed from time.

This is the type of movie I normally don't like, beautiful but barely likable characters acting within extremely stylized scenes, glassy emotion favored over depth or narrative boldness. But, The Disobedient uses this often unlikable form as a critique on the very culture it is displaying. It captures the essence of childhood innocence, the tortured beauty in growing up, the minefield of interpersonal relationships, inconsequential tradition, and questions the status quo (an epic, comically surreal wedding crashing scene actually manages to address all of these themes in one swift spin), imparting these portraits with a contrived rawness that is ingrained in the ever-growing real world population of childlike adults. This film is a striking portrait of gross indulgence that is a difficult truth to look at, if living in the (manufactured, dreamy, contradictory) moment is the alternative to responsibility & stability what does the future look like?  Rooftop Films Tuesday July 1st, NY Premier with the actors & director & drinks & Balkan music on a rooftop farm. Seriously.

Thanksgiving tells a story about a woman who invites her so-called brother to Thanksgiving, an arrogant man-child coolly living off the grid. His truculent attitude slowly chips away at her normal life, one that is swathed in a room full of holiday hipster perfection (probably gluten free & locally sourced) complete with a boring, round-glasses-wearing, doting partner...The theme of beautiful exteriors and clawing interiors is mirrored by the warm yellow tone of the film, an embracing softness that feels too good to be true and just might be. The cramped spaces of the city & its expectations balanced with the sweeping unknown of an outdoor hike made me wonder if the director, Adam Newport-Berra, was a cinematographer: he is!. Berra tells most of the story through visual tension, relying on a strong eye, and placing his characters expertly within his vivid frames. This film is a very real tale about a conflict that I think many 20-30year old gentrifying urbanites go through: do we want a passionate, volatile, exciting life or do we want the seemingly smooth ride of complacency and tradition? Do we want to play records or do we want to play house?

Thanksgiving tells a common conflict of growing up vs. not growing up but it does not simply announce a clear winner. It slyly explores the entire notion of societal expectations and personal expression- what we want, want we are told we want, and what we actually need- with a slight acknowledgement of how capitalism defines these expectations & expressions. Similar in scope to the film Rachel Getting Married (an idealized gloss of an event with a charged undercurrent of anger & dissatisfaction) and even a little of Woody Allen's Interiors (composed spaces glossing over real familial concerns) the calm, tender filmmaking that supports the narrative is crafted by a thoughtful, ambitious eye, a filmmaker who hopefully has more stories to tell. Thanksgiving has its world premier at  Rooftop Films Thursday July 3rd, the film will open with a special guest set by comic Reggie Watts (who makes a cameo in the film).

[Note: I wrote (heavily edited) descriptions of these films for Rooftop!]