Movie City Indie Archive for September, 2008
Une catastrophe par Jean-Luc Godard [2008, ****]
J-LG’s trailer for the Viennale, or, as the YouTube poster puts it, “Bande-annonce de la Viennale et opus godardien impénétrable.”
Jeff Dowd's new ditty: spaceman and the dude, revolutions
well, it is political, dude.
Wasted, rotoscoped by Raymond Prado for Austin musician Matthew Bryan
Wasted- Matthew Bryan by Raymond Prado from Raymond Prado.
Northern composure: Forsaking fiction in a world of mad fact
12:30pm, 11 September 2001
Pure joy, pure bliss: I saw a movie called Amelie on Monday night that seemed to have made my movie year.
Little tears sting my eyes throughout. I join friends from New York at a party for a film set in Los Angeles. We talk about what we have seen. I think of questions to ask the director of Amelie today.
I sleep on it. I wake a little after 10 on Tuesday to the words of my roommate at the Toronto International Film Festival. I’m supposed to interview David Lynch in a couple of hours, talk about the psycho-mayhem of Mulholland Drive, a movie of glittering absurdity.
But CNN is on in the living room. My colleague, S—, and I watch the footage from New York. We’re kibitzing in a void, not really listening to each other, just commenting and theorizing so gravity does not pin us to the ground. Toronto local lines work, I can get on-line. Cell phone, forget about it. I have to assume my friends are fine. None of them live or work near the World Trade Center.
S— and I watch the footage, ash-covered emergency vehicles slaloming between pedestrians, spilled into the street, faces mostly blank, some bloodied, all urgently getting away: from danger, from cameras, from mad fact.
The philosopher George Steiner has a new book out. He continues his argument of many years that language is no longer possible, and has not been in the time that has spun out since the Holocaust. I can’t follow all his reasoning. But fiction I am concerned about today. Yesterday, audiences were shaken by Tim Blake Nelson’s Holocaust narrative, The Grey Zone. I decided to wait. I wanted joy, not gloom. Distraction, craft, the diversion of art: not the diversion of tragedy to fiction.
Away, new photographs
If you’re in Chicago in the next five weeks, a new selection of six large-scale photographs entitled Away will be shown at Atomix, near the intersection of Chicago and Damen. Please stop by…
Nagi Noda, 35, noted Japanese director, designer
Creativity’s Ann-Christine Diaz reports the death of Nagi Noda, “the Japanese artist/designer/director behind groundbreaking music videos and spots passed away on Sunday, September 7. She was 35. Noda had experienced ongoing complications related to a bad car accident last year that resulted in chronic pain. The exact cause of death was not specified. “Beyond being a brilliant artist and wonderful talent, Nagi was one of the most incredibly unique spirits that I have known,” says Sheila Stepanek, CEO/EP Partizan US, which represented Noda. “Our thoughts and prayers are with her family and friends.” Stepanek says that Noda passed “in her Mark Ryden dress, Chanel boots, perfect make-up with Viktor & Rolf lace black eye lashes.” Noda was best known in the ad industry for her fantastic “Sentimental Journey” clip for Japanese pop star Yuki, which featured multiple “analog” clones of the singer and was featured in Saatchi’s 2006 New Directors Showcase.” More at the link, including two samples of her work, plus a link to her “Hearts on Fire” video for Cut/Copy as well as for “She’s My Man” for Scissor Sisters. (Embedding is not allowed for these.) And: a truly lovely 2006 video, “TIGA (far from) Home.”