Silten wares

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  The assembly line / It coughed And Thick was / The resultant silt   It huffed / The silt thick And The trucks /…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWrBV6tfNC4   The assembly line / It coughed And Thick was / The resultant silt   It huffed / The silt thick And The trucks / Stunting like   Silten wares / As far as thy can see Read More...
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With the pathos of uplift characteristic of the Progressive era, the nickelodeon was hailed (or condemned for not fulfilling its proper function) as ‘democracy’s theater’,…
http://youtu.be/HTmVLHXn3H4 With the pathos of uplift characteristic of the Progressive era, the nickelodeon was hailed (or condemned for not fulfilling its proper function) as ‘democracy’s theater’, ‘the labouring man’s univeristy’ or - in a more sober vein - at least ‘a worthy rival of the saloon.’  Read More...

World Melodrama: Nobody's Children, 1950

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“It’s needlessly cruel.”  Watching Nobody's Children is something like watching four people drive a car to the edge of a cliff, get out, and push…
“It’s needlessly cruel.”  Watching Nobody's Children is something like watching four people drive a car to the edge of a cliff, get out, and push with all their might, dragging themselves and their vehicle over the edge, while proclaiming at the top of their lungs all the while that there was no way to avoid their cursed fate.  In other words, it's a film about the ways that we're deeply complicit in perpetuating own doom, whether that doom be erotic, familial, political, or some hellish combo of them all, and the ways that we totally deny any responsibility for the shitstorm.  It is also a wild, lurid, maddening mess of expressionist melodrama from Rafaello Matarazzo, a director whose recurrent runaway box office success in the heady days of postwar Italy infuriated the cinematic left.  They need not have worried so:… Read More...

World Melodrama: Opfergang, 1944

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Omnia sunt communia, especially a century's worth of tears and bareback horseback riding.
[While this will only technically apply to those in California, I figured I would share with the wider world the line-up of the world melodrama series I run with my collaborator and friend Erik, for any of those who need some things to be watching, or even better, who want to follow along week by week.  When time permits, I'll write up reflections on them as they go.  All are relatively easy to track down.  If anyone really can't find something via the channels I need not spell out, let me know, and I'll try to find a way to get it to you.  Omnia sunt communia, especially a century's worth of tears and bareback horseback riding.]   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hbFuxRCrzw You, death's sweetest and most secretly anticipated pleasure. One of only a few color films produced by the Third Reich during… Read More...

The Hinterland: A Travelogue, Part 1

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When our headlights raked the waiting woods along a curve, their eyes, clouded over with glaucoma, peered back, unstartled, ravenous, dull as milk.
[Last week I drove across the country with my father, taking the entire length of I-80, ending in California.  This is an account of that trip.] As we rolled through the last checkpoint before The Hinterland, the apparently drunk guards greasily fingering their triggers, I plopped three drops into each eye, as I always did.  The slick solution stung slightly, its reek geriatric, bleached and ugly.  Blinked my eyes wet, watched hands smear into flippers or mittens, waved them around, swimming inside the car’s cramped box.  My father sighed, pointedly.  He found these preparations, and the “superstition” that necessitated them, wholly ridiculous. You know this song and dance isn’t necessary, he told me.  But he didn’t push it, went quiet as I hummed loudly and dog paddled the phantom breakers over the cracked dash.  Just because he found it ridiculous… Read More...

Double header

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Every film should come in a pairing to reveal its salient differences.  Such as height of font.  And type of building that is on fire. …
Every film should come in a pairing to reveal its salient differences.  Such as height of font.  And type of building that is on fire.  And the gap between THE ULTIMATE BATTLE BEGINS vs JUDGMENT IS COMING, because one can certainly have an ultimate battle with very little judgment, as well as preliminary judgments coming that aren't ultimate at all.  Otherwise, one might get confused, because certain other elements, such as the color of smoke and the total and utter baleful similarity of instances of the post-first person shooter film, do have a bit in common. As a further application of this principle, Snow White & The Huntsman here shares double billing with its unofficial prequel, WET PAINT, which also involves large swaths of visual material broken up into smaller ones but which, it must be said, has far more… Read More...

Desecration Hardware, 2 (The Strand Antiqued Mirror Collection)

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This could only mean that the house in which we stood was not only vampire but cannibal and curator.
[prior chapter here] CHAPTER 2. INTRODUCING THE STRAND ANTIQUED MIRROR COLLECTION     RECALLING THE STREAMLINED SIMPLICITY OF FRENCH ART DECO FURNISHINGS, STRAND STRIKES A HARMONIOUS BALANCE BETWEEN UNDERSTATED GLAMOUR AND FUNCTIONAL DESIGN.  CONSTRUCTED WITH WATERFALL EDGES, THE MIRRORED SURFACES ARE AGED FOR AN ANTIQUED PATINA THAT’S COMPLEMENTED WITH DARK METAL TRIM. C-D. Strand Mirrored Table 48” Nesting Side Table $995 48” Coffee Table $1095 72” Coffee Table $1295 (Shown)   The relief we felt at having left behind the oppressive presence of the Montpellier armoire, coupled with a tinge of self-recriminating melancholy for having so misjudged its malign nature, was far from minor.  We were, I’ll admit, almost giddy.  S. crept to the door - which also lacked a handle, although for our own sake we avoided thinking about its obvious similarity with the last unhandled door seen -… Read More...

Desecration Hardware (Prelude: The Montpellier Armoire)

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especially when there are Montpellier Armoires - yes, plural… - around, which, we were to learn later, start at $3495 and are notoriously resistant to small arms fire
[introduction here]   In 1980, not long after a total solar eclipse bathed North Africa and West Asia in daytime dusk and, in entirely related events, the Norwegian oil platform Alexander L. Kielland collapsed into the North Sea, bringing with it more than half of its 212 man crew, and, precisely two weeks after the death of Marshal Josip Broz Tito, Mount St. Helen's launched the most extensive act of volcanic sabotage in North American history, Stephen Gordon opened the first Restoration Hardware store in Eureka, California. The store, which sold authentically weathered and historically accurate home furnishings, was based out of Gordon's own home, much as the Costan Rican wasp will lay an egg on the belly of the Plesiometa argyra spider. From that egg, the emergent larva will first suck the blood of the host, as if of… Read More...

Desecration Hardware (Project Introduction)

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It is also, coincidentally, as if history vomited in its mouth and breathed it back down into its lungs.
PROJECT INTRODUCTION Yesterday, there was something in the mailbox for me.  Something enormous, unexpected, unrequested, and ghastly. It is called the Restoration Hardware Fall 2012 Sourcebook.  Until this moment, I didn’t know what a Restoration Hardware is.  For starters, it is very large. It involves three pieces, one of which is 690 pages of paper, one is 154, and the third is only one free floating page but makes reference to how ecologically sound the collective existence of the other 744 pages is.  Currently without the kind of scale on which one might weigh marijuana or robin feathers, I am limited to estimating, but it feels about the weight of one human hand and the majority of a forearm.  A large hand, a large arm. Judging by the sheer dazzling size of the object, I assumed that I had, whilst… Read More...
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We gather around a hole, and though the fingers are worn to stubs in holding fast through the storm, still,  thank God, bloody still the…
http://vimeo.com/9716416 We gather around a hole, and though the fingers are worn to stubs in holding fast through the storm, still,  thank God, bloody still the hole is there. Read More...