Moving Pictures
4 Most Highly Anticipated Movies
+ Melancholia
{I love Lars von Trier’s work, he’s one of my favorite contemporary directors, and his last film Antichrist (from 2009) was amazing. This movie looks to be potentially amazing as well. Starring Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg, with a role by Charlotte Rampling also, Melancholia can be described as a surreal psychological sci-fi film; the word “Melancholia” being both the name of the planet that’s imminently colliding with the Earth, and an apt term for the feeling and atmosphere of the movie. It promises to be intense, provocative, over-the-top emotional as Von Trier is known for; with a theatrical, sometimes even overly sentimental soundtrack. I love the surreal, beautiful image of Justine (Kirsten Dunst) floating down the river in her wedding gown holding her bouquet. It doesn’t currently have a U.S. release date, but I hope to see it sometime in 2011.}
+ The Tree of Life
{This Terrence Malick-directed movie, starring Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, and Jessica Chastain, will be released on May 27. It’s one of the most beautiful movie trailers I’ve ever, ever seen. Vague and mystical, it doesn’t show us much of the story, but it’s incredible and moving. It splices together stunning images of outer space, nature on Earth, man-made structures like the ceiling of a church, and scenes from the childhood of the protagonist, Jack (from really interesting camera perspectives, too), in a kind of visual poetry. It seems to be about a man who’s grown up to be an astronaut (Sean Penn) and who’s reflecting on his upbringing and the lessons he learned from his parents, one of whom (the mother) represents the way of love and mercy, and the other of whom represents pragmatism and the way of the world. There’s a line whispered by the young Jack which expresses this tension, “Father…Mother…always you wrestle inside me. Always you will”; and his mother at the end saying, “If you don’t love, your life will flash by.”}
+ Sleeping Beauty
{This movie is written and directed by Julia Leigh and stars Emily Browning, whom I loved in Sucker Punch. It’s a surreal, visually elegant, and classy piece with an oblique fairy tale reference, described as a “haunting portrait of Lucy, a young university student drawn into a mysterious world of hidden desires.” It reminds me of both Luis Buñuel’s Belle de Jour from 1967 and Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut. I like its air of mystery, anticipation, and stillness, and its almost-retro sense of elegance and preciseness. It looks like a rare gem. It’s released in Australia on June 23, but doesn’t yet have a U.S. release date.}
+ Martha Marcy May Marlene
{Described as “a thriller that shifts nearly imperceptibly between dream, memory, and reality,” with a bravura performance by Elizabeth Olsen (yes, the younger sister of the Olsen twins), this movie looks really interesting and like one of those near-perfect movies that come along once in a while. It’s about a young woman, Martha, who’s “haunted by painful memories and increasing paranoia” after escaping from a cult. It gets a wide release on July 10.}
Tags: emotive, experimental, hauntingly beautiful, lars von trier, madness, nature, sci-fi, surreal, trailers
Space Oddities in Black and Silver: Erevos Aether’s “Gaping Void”
EREVOS AETHER’S GAPING VOID from KONSTANTINOS MENELAOU
+ Directed by Konstantinos Menelaou
+ Choreographed by Nathaniel Parchment
+ Photographed by Natalia Asimi
+ Jewelry design by Maria Piana
+ Design & styling by Erevos Aethervia Twisted Lamb
Tags: alien beauty, architectural fashion, avant-garde, avant-garde goth, dance, distorted bodies, electronic music, experimental, fashion films, futuristic, haute couture, high fashion, jewelry, masks, military/warrior chic, performance art, sci-fi, short films
Two Animation Sequences
+ The beautiful sequence depicting the tale of the Three Brothers in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1:
+ A surreal stop-motion sequence from Tarsem Singh’s The Fall:
Tags: animations, avant-garde, creepy, hauntingly beautiful, movie clips, surreal
Film Review: Enter the Void
2009′s Enter the Void is the third film I’ve seen by French director Gaspar Noé, the other two being Irreversible and I Stand Alone. It’s my favorite of the three. This post is long overdue, as I saw (and was blown away by) it several months ago.
From the very beginning, with its blaringly colorful, garishly flashy, epileptic seizure-inducing opening titles, Enter the Void is obviously striving to do something visually very different and impactive, aiming for sensory overload and trippy, mind-bending experiences. And it succeeds. Destined for controversy and lots of hate due to its graphic sexual content and themes, I think few people would deny that visually, it’s pretty interesting and innovative.
Tags: colorful, conceptual, erotic, experimental, film reviews, gaspar noe, indescribable, mindfuck, new french extremity, psychedelic
TRON: Legacy {Fashion}
You know what I’m looking forward to in the future? Aside from a cure for cancer, and personal jet-packs, and all that? Slick, form-fitting fashion like that in TRON: Legacy.
Tags: black and white, contemporary architecture, cyber aesthetic, futuristic, interior design, sci-fi
Short Film: “Monarch”
A lovely experimental short film, titled Monarch, with styling and modeling by one of my favorite alternative models and greatest creative/style inspirations, Anna Swiczeniuk, also known as Aiko273, and filmed by Markabre Charade.
Tags: 1920s, aiko273, colorful, emotive, hauntingly beautiful, homage to silent film, makeup, short films
“1.1 Negredo: The Raven”
A short film directed by Jez Tozer, inspired by autumn/winter 2010 fashion collections, set to beautiful melancholy string music. Featuring items by Haider Ackermann, Lanvin, Emilio de la Morena, Viktor & Rolf, Hussein Chalayan, Agent Provocateur, and others.
Tags: avant-garde goth, fashion films, hauntingly beautiful, haute couture, high fashion, medieval inspiration, melancholy, renaissance, short films
Domestic Violence Ad
This is a really powerful minute-long commercial, if you can call it that, for the National Domestic Violence Hotline.
Tags: blood, bruises, commercials, domestic violence, emotive, injuries, special effects makeup
“Immune”: Floria Sigismondi
Floria Sigismondi is an Italian-Canadian photographer, director, and filmmaker who breaks the boundaries between mainstream and alternative visual culture. She has worked with many high-profile artists on their music videos, including Björk, The Cure, Marilyn Manson, and The White Stripes. Her personal projects and commercial work both amaze me with their preternatural beauty and color.
Floria’s vivid, hallucinatory images are morbid, beautiful, and hyper[sur]real. Her works take place in a strange, artificial, and gorgeously colorful world of her own – film stills from her videos could be taken for photo-art and vice versa.
Tags: floria sigismondi, medical-themed, music videos, otherworldly photography, religious imagery, saturated color, self-portraits, surreal horror, virgin mary
Short Film: “Embrio”
Embrio is an experimental short film made entirely by Jean-Sébastien Monzani (story, direction, film, & music), with amazing acting by Stéphanie Schneider.
What draws me to Embrio is its quality of implicit horror, conveyed through the actor’s subtle, ever-changing expressions (she really is the heart of the movie) and the eerie, intense, atmospheric soundtrack. Sans a conventional narrative, Embrio explores the compulsions, fixations, obsessions, and psychological reactions of a young woman, and, though very well-composed, it also has a rawness, depicting naked sensations and emotions with all the vagueness and ambiguity of good psychological horror – all within a clean, bright, well-lit, nearly sterile environment. It draws us deeply, physically, into the experience of the woman, and gets under our skin.
Tags: experimental, psychological horror, short films, surreal horror
