Black Dynamite

Occasionally a film slips under the radar if it fails to fit to strict genre conventions. For example, the spoof has to be either of Epic Movie-proportions of shitness or OD the audience on self-regarding levels of post-modern pretention (Tarantino anyone?).

But not Black Dynamite. Yes, it is pastiche that doesn't serve to eulogise its numerous source materials. Yeah, it doesn't depoliticise its referents them but rather satirises them effectively. What is pressing about Scott Sanders' movie is it's fucking funny.

The look of the film is uncanny-- it took one of us a few minutes to realise (when he got told) that this was made last year and not 1977. Apparently, (according to Wikipedia) the cinematographer, Shaun Maurer used "Super 16 Color Reversal Kodak film stock" to acheive this look. If this means anything to anyone of you then great because we have no idea. Essentially, this allows Sanders to give the film a verismilitude in visuals that goes well with this general approach across the production. The film looks good, sounds good and you don't get 90minutes of z-list actors trying to gurn their way into making you laugh.

However, if we are going to tell you any more about what makes it funny then we'd just be quoting lines at you. So just watch it. Here's the trailer:

Lasers and Maps and such....

It's been a big week for technology with the TED conference taking place and collectively blowing people's minds with fancy pants technology.

Often these events have a tendency to turn into an industry back-patting, pant tightening  session of gratuitous self-love. One only has to look to the now fabled and mythologized Apple keynote speeches that are waited for with baited breath by thousands of white shelled, wide eyed, maniacal fan boys, slowly rubbing their legs and muttering sweet-nothings into each other's ears. (Of which some of us are, so it's fine to be a little critical. Also this took a turn for the homoerotic very quickly didn't it?)

Smugness has come to define these events, leaving many more than a little cold to the promise of new technologies that are eager to invoke words like 'interactive' and 'personal' and 'REVO-FUCKING-LUTION!' In fact with the amount of revolutions that have apparently happened in the digital world over the past ten years it's not surprising that it is apathy that has come to define the embryonic years of the new millennium (massively generalized statements with no real grounding are fun!). 

"What's that dear another revolution? Ok I'll put the kettle on. How many dead in the blood filled streets of change? Ohhh that's a few more than last week, oh look Shackled Bears, dancing on ice is on. Super".

However the TED conference is a little different. As a non-profit organization with fuck-tons of funding, their aim is to essentially change the world through the encouragement of the integration between creativity and technology and then showcase those efforts they feel worthy of such ambitious criteria. Bold some may say, but interesting non-the less. They can explain themselves a lot better than us so check them out here. 

All this being said one of their strongest points has to be their dedication to reaching those poor backward non-English speaking people wherever they may be (All 4.5 Billion of them), using hundreds of volunteers to translate the conferences and presentations into over 40 languages. Apparently. So well done them.

The two internet 'hits' from the conference that people have been shitting themselves over, as if the secret bowl emptying musical note had been discovered are firstly; Microsoft's new interactive augmented reality mapping system, which can only be described as completely fucking nuts in both its appearance, smoothness and down-right good ol' fashioned applicability.

Next up is the Death Star. Yup. The Death Star. For Mosquitos. Nobody likes Mosquitos and whilst this all may seem a little weird and bleak, conjuring the image of Darth Vader cackling as Alderon is blown into nothingness, the application of this technology is meant to combat Malaria in Africa. So fine. Probably. (It reminds us of this classic as well, which might be a bit more problematic considering the whole Nazi thing.) 

So there's some technology for you from the still smug, but impressive none the less TED. Viva la Revolution! 

  

Reviews of Films We Haven't Seen

Crazy Heart:
dir. Scott Cooper
Basically looks like the Big Lebowski if it was made by people who didn't know what a joke is.

Precious:
dir. Lee Daniels

- "LIFE IS BAD. LIFE IS SHIT. LIFE IS A NEVER ENDING SERIES OF CONFRONTATIONS WHERE PEOPLE SCREAM ALL THE TIME AND THROW PANS AT EACH OTHER. LIFE IS AWEFUL. LIFE IS HELL. LIFE IS MURDEROUS. LIFE IS RAMBUNCTIOUS. LIFE IS SOLEM. LIFE IS MONEY. LIFE IS TIME. LIFE IS LAMP. LIFE IS MARIAH CARAEY LOOKING DREADFUL. LIFE IS PRESENTED TO YOU BY OPERAH. LIFE IS CRYING ALL THE TIME. LIFE IS ONE DAMAGING RELATIONSHIP AFTER ANOTHER. LIFE IS FUCKING MISERABLE........

....LIFE. IS. PRECIOUS."

E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. (Yes one of us has actually never seen this film. We know it's poor form)

dir. Steven Spielberg.

'E.T. phone home....' This was the infamous message that was left on E.T.'s Blackberry. No one ever found out why E.T. did have to phone home, but here are a few possibilities as to why the person on the other end was so insistent that E.T. come back from his gap year with Drew Barrymore.

"E.T. Phone home........"

- " Your father has died in a car crash."

- " We can't work out how to use the sky-remote and we want to tape Dog Soldiers."

- " Mum's blacked out in the bath. Again."

So the basic plot is that E.T. (which stands for Evan Tanner, played by Seth Rogan) is a crude, lude, weed smoking-dude who needs some direction in his life. He works a bad job, and lives at home. This is all until his parents are tragically murdered by Eric Bana for taking part in the Munich Olympic kidnappings. He spirals into a well of depression, guzzling down painkillers and cheap Cava. That is all until he meets a 7 year old Drew Barrymore who teaches him how to love again. They go on a road trip that will change their lives forever, tracing the journey that E.T.'s parents made all those years ago during the Cold-War. They visit Morgan Freeman, but he's of no help at all, drunk and alone and rolling around in his own piss and shit. They have become an intimidating trio, living each day as if it were their last. This is all until the film finishes on a satisfying cliffhanger when E.T. receives a mysterious phone-call, from an even more mysterious stranger.....He must, phone home. Fade to black.

We would give this film a 6/10 mainly for the nude scenes.

American Beauty (yes, one of us hasn't seen this either. Shame)

dir. Sam Mendes.

Kevin Spacey and a plastic bag take the lead roles in this action packed, white-knuckle, hold onto your seat or you might vomit, roller-coaster of a movie. We join the story with Spacey mourning the loss of his sexual allure: he used to be such a stud, but now nothing can get those pale young boys into the backseat of his 1995 cream Ford Fiesta. After trying his hand at being a drug fueled ring master at the local circus (urinating into the eyes of hungry lions to ensure his next fix), Spacey tries his hand at puppeteering. Donning a plastic bag on his right hand, he begins his quest for true love. Society never accepts him. Probably because he has a Happy Shopper bag on his hand.

That aside, the subtle and tender love story is underpinned with relentless car chases, high-wire dog fights and a scene of a severe sexual nature. Eventually, Spacey gets what he is seeking, and in true good cop / bad bag fashion, the sharking duo unearth the underage treasure chest they sought so longingly for.

Bingo. We would give this film 3 / 10. We feel like Spacey lets it down.

The Bad Lieutenant: Port of call- New Orleans. (Or a we like to call it; The Naughty Lieutenant)

dir. Werner Herzog

Nicholas Cage takes Cocaine lines and Werner Herzog films it. Cop's can't handle their Blow.

(We have since seen this film and it turns out cop's can definitely handle their blow.)

Valentine's Day

dir. Gary Marshall.

This is a film about all the people in the world you want to kill, watched by all the people you've ever hated.

This is 10/10 for sure because 10x10 is 100 and that's about how many times we screamed out loud "arghghghghghhg FUCK ALL OF THESE PEOPLE AAAHHHHAHAHH WE HATE YOU AND YOUR CRASS MEDIOCRITY PARADING AS ROMANCE TO HOARDS HAPLESS RETARDS OF THE SAME ILK. MAY YOU ALL BURN IN HELL YOU PIECES OF SHIT". 

The Boys Are Back
dir. Scott Hicks.

Has your Mother recently passed away? Never mind, because you'll have more fun now she's dead. Apparently women ruin the fun and Clive Owen makes the fun.
At first though Owen's "respected journalist" doesn't know who to support on the female tennis court, asking the age old dillema: legs or breasts? He puts the question to his now-motherless children who assert their preference for the arse. Owen is amazed he forgot about the arse.

Essentially, a dickhead loses his wife and raises a couple of sociopathic dickheads who cannot accept not getting their own way. The moral of the story? Want to spoil your children? Let your wife die.

Our favourite part of the film? When the remaining family die in a horrific base jumping accident. Put's it up to a 4/10.

Infantile at best- Sunday Treats.

The Internet is awesome. Here's some little tasty treats we've found this week.

The Fresh Prince Gangsta Version.

Remember that episode of TFPOBA (abbreviating is fun) where Will was considering moving back to Philly with his mum? Well this is what might have happened if he'd stayed in West Philadelphia where he was born and raised instead of getting the fuck out of there as soon as he could.

A collection of Lolz.

Hardly original but people falling down and getting hurt is pretty much always funny even if it is cheap and dirty.

Clarissa did explain it all.

'Hey Sam'. This show was awesome. They should bring it back, someone get on that.

Home Alone: Retribution

This is probably what would have happened. We're not sure who's more damaged; the future Kevin Bannister, or the present Macaulay Culkin?

Thanks to B3ta for reminding us that The Internet is awesome.

 

Culture and Swearing

What with our impenetrable anonymity (see the final photo featured in the Marilyn’s first ever post: as I say, impenetrable), the following might surprise you. But we get asked all the time – literally all the goddam time – what ‘Culture and Swearing’, our subtitle, our tagline, our afterthought, our surname actually, y’know, means like. Is it mere pithily expressed provocativeness? Does it attempt to bridge a mutually exclusive binary? Is culture ordinary? Is swearing extraordinary? And so on.

And so forth.

Now, to answer such questions explicitly would be to miss the point rather – such coarse and unelaborate behaviour is the preserve of, I don’t know, fags obsessed with ‘books’ and ‘polemic’, fucking Welshmen like Raymond Williams, those sort of fags. We, on the other hand, concern ourselves with the elegant and the epigrammatical, responses that offer you, the reader, an opportunity to formulate meanings of your own within a broad intellectual framework constructed and, compassionately of course, policed by us, the fathers of your children, the masters of your literary wombs. So for the first in what may or may not become a regular feature, let us answer the question in a manner entirely our own:

What is ‘Culture and Swearing’?

‘Culture and Swearing’ is George Bataille’s Story of the Eye.

Aha! George Bataille – a fictional figure conceived by moderately successful willy-exposing weirdos Of Montreal as a means to facilitating easier rhyming within their twelve-minutes-long so-long-it’s-inevitably-regarded-as-a-masterpiece-masterpiece, ‘The Past is a Grotesque Animal’ (a hilariously weak acoustic version can be found here), I hear you cry. “I fell in love with the first cute girl that I met / Who could appreciate George Bataille / Standing at a Swedish festival – discussing Story of the Eye.” I see the culture – but where’s the swearing?

Oho, just you wait fucko. First, though, a bio (thank you Penguin Modern Classics – you didn’t actually think Of Montreal invented him did you? Have you any idea how ridiculous that thought of yours actually was? I hate you): "George Bataille, French essayist and novelist, was born in 1897. He was converted to Catholicism, then to Marxism and was interested in psychoanalysis and mysticism. As curator of the municipal library in Orleans, he led a relatively simple life, although he became involved, usually on the fringes, with the Surrealist movement. He founded the literary review Critique in 1946, which he edited until his death in 1962, and was also founder of the review Documents, which published many of the leading surrealist writers."

He led a relatively simple life? YOU DEGODDAMCIDE::::::::::

Passage the first – bottom of page 12 in the Modern Classics edition:

"Meanwhile, the sky had turned quite thundery, and, with nightfall, huge raindrops began plopping down, bringing relief from the harshness of the torrid, airless day. The sea was loudly raging, outroared by long rumbles of thunder, while flashes of lightning, bright as day, kept brusquely revealing the two pleasured cunts of the now silent girls. A brutal frenzy drove our three bodies. Two young mouths fought over my arse, my balls, and my cock, but I still kept pushing apart female legs wet with saliva and come, splaying them as if writhing out of a monster’s grip, and yet the monster was nothing but the utter violence of my movements. The hot rain was finally pouring down and streaming over fully exposed bodies. Huge booms of thunder shook us, heightening our fury, wresting forth our cries of rage, which each flash accompanied with a glimpse of our sexual parts. Simone had found a mud puddle, and was smearing herself wildly: she was jerking off with the earth and coming violently, whipped by the downpour, my head locked in her soil-covered legs, her face wallowing in the puddle, where she was brutally churning Marcelle’s cunt, one arm around Marcelle’s hips, the hand yanking the thigh, forcing it open."

Passage the second – top of page 17:

"She wanted to toss off in the wardrobe and was pleading to be left in peace.

"I ought to say that we were all very drunk and completely bowled over by what was going on. The naked boy was being sucked by a girl. Simone, standing with her dress tucked up, was rubbing her bare cunt against the wardrobe, in which a girl was audibly masturbating with brutal gasps. And all at once, something incredible happened, a strange swish of water, followed by a trickle and a stream from under the wardrobe door: poor Marcelle was pissing in her wardrobe while masturbating. But the explosion of drunken guffaws that ensued rapidly degenerated into a debauch of tumbling bodies, lofty legs and arses, wet skirts and come. Guffaws emerged like foolish and involuntary hiccups but scarcely managed to interrupt a brutal onslaught on cunts and cocks…I was pale, smeared with blood, my clothes askew. During the orgy, splinters of glass had left deep bleeding cuts in two of us. A young girl was throwing up…The resulting smell stench of blood, sperm, urine and vomit made me almost recoil in terror."

Thank you to Joachim Neugroschal, translator. Next week, The Marquis, John Rochester or the fuck scene from Season 1 of the Wire.

Vassell's World Update

So, top news on Darius’ blog: he’s grown a beard. Yes it’s true a beard. That’s all I’m going to say. Just read below.

“Friday 29th January 2010

MY BEARD


Ok folks i know, i look rough.. My beard is getting out of hand... I tried to sms message my hairdresser but my instructions in Turkish were obviously never going to cut it (pardon the pun) lol
I wrote -Husam, Vassell. Haydi lutfen. tiras eden elektriksel Makas. Sakal choc uzun....
It was meant to translate - Husam its Vassell, come please? bring electric shavers, my beard is too long...
At least im trying though..
One thing that ive been impressed with in Turkey are the Turkish shaves, my skin normally too sensitive for a razor i tend to get razor bumps but ive never once had that problem when being shaven by Turkish Hairdressers…”

On top of this a follower of the blog claimed Darius looked like Kimbo Slice. We're definately not sure, but it is funny so decide for yourselves:





Just great. The pain and empathy we feel only increases in time as we follow this blog. Oh, and in other news…

“25th December 2009

Merry Christmas!!! Today my Partner Amani agreed to marry me!!! Another major step in my life, our families anticipate all the good things as we plan our future together!!!”

We really, really help it works out.

Being nice about Artists instead of being mean about them.

Here at the Mansion we are well aware of our tendency to sneer and turn out digital noses up at everything and anything that crosses our path. We are also hyper-aware that everyone can recognise that this is but a thinly veiled defense mechanism, born out of a heady concoction of contempt, laziness and a crippling fear of rejection.

With this in mind, we thought it might be time to mention something that we actually like as opposed to loathe. Below are some video and digital artists/projects that get us hyped up. Some of these artists for people who know anything about video art in particular, may induce an eye roll coupled with a 'well duh' response, so consider this a small starting point and introduction to digital and media art.

Bill Viola

Bill Viola is probably the most influential video artist living today. His works spans from the mid seventies up to, well, now. Initially his work concerned the documentation and exploration of highly personal events in his life, such as his near fatal drowning and the death of his mother. The latter, entitled The Passing, became somewhat of a breakthrough and captured the traumatic event as it unfolded.

His work now uses high definition cameras that capture images in a highly detailed slow motion. The Passions, which invoke religious works of art, have been screened all over the world, often being held in Cathedrals. The work is then projected onto varying surfaces such as smoke and water. Anyway, here's Bill talking with The Tate about Ocean without a Shore from a few years ago.

The Reflecting Pool- Bill Viola.

 

Martin Arnold

Martin Arnold, the Austrian born filmmaker, has a background in psychoanalysis and fine art. He uses found material from classic Hollywood cinema and applies editing techniques as a means by which to reveal repressed and neurotic counter narratives. The most notable of his works are Piece Touchée, Passage a'lacte and Alone: Life Wastes Andy Hardy. He's been a little quiet as of late but these works still have us here scratching our heads. The strength of the work is that as apposed to presenting representations of madness, hysteria, and neurosis, he takes their very characteristics and undoes the original material with them as tools. Plus they're super funny in places.

UNSW: iCinema- T-Visionarium 

 This is a project established at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. This video explains the work fairly well so we won't go on too much. However, it is worth mentioning the importance of this work in the field of interactive digital art. It looks quite a lot like Minority Report except no Tom Cruise or drunk Colin Farrell. The user is able to interact with thousands of video clips from Australian television and reconfigure them together with others in any sequence they want. It's amazing and really pushes the boundaries of interactivity, combing both the digital and televisual.

Alex Roman- The Third, and The Seventh.

This is all C.G.I. Drink that in for a minute. Every bit of it is C.G.I. We're trying to think of something clever to say.......... Nope. This is going to take a while to get our heads round. Stunning work.

Chunky Move- Glow.

Chunky Move are a Melbourne based group who integrate advanced projection technologies and dance. Big Phil Auslander claims in Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture that Dance+Virtual=Virtual. We claim that Dance+Virtual=Awesome. In their work Glow the space between performer and the virtual is distorted inducing spacial disorientation. Their piece Mortal Engine is touring this year so check them out.

    

So there's a few Artists who we like. There's plenty of great new work coming out and with technology getting crazy there's a lot of potential for interactive art to really take on a new shape in the digital realm.

If you have any other suggestions, throw down some comments and link us to their work, we're always psyched to find out about new artists.