Black Moon

Thanks to the glory that is Janus Films and their continually outstanding Criterion Collection...um, collection -- I've recently been turned on to the staggeringly beautiful weirdness that is Louis Malle's Black Moon. An English-dialogue French Surrealist revision of Alice in Wonderland that concerns itself with ambiance and atmosphere, rather than any actual plot. Bitchy fat unicorns, brother/sister make up parties, an elderly matron whose best friend is a rat and who breast feeds from her daughter -- it's an incomprehensible, indescribable fever dream that follows dream logic from start to finish. While it's not a film that will connect with everyone, it's definitely a film that will leave its mark with all who give it a chance.

7 inches...

I've recently started moving my vinyl collection into the digital realm; it's been far easier than initially thought, and it's also reacquainted me with some long lost friends and long lost gems.

So, I thought I'd share these wonders with anyone who happened to be interested:

I've started tossing them up on a new blog: 7 Inches of Ecstasy

For now, I'm focusing mostly on my 7" and "45" records, but I'm sure I'll throw in an occasional 10" or 12" long player for variety.

Come on over and join the party!

I Was There

I've recently started another blog, over in the Tumblr universe. It's nothing but scans of all the various concert/movie/event tickets I've held onto over the years.

It can be found at:

http://ticket-taker.tumblr.com

Come on over!

Stumptown 2011

This past weekend was the 2011 Stumptown Comics Fest. Again, I volunteered for a few hours during the festival in exchange for free entry. Saturday, I spent my time chatting and catching up with friends, sported my Vic Boone hoodie to try and raise awareness for an awesome upcoming new comics series, bought a lot of shit, and had my sketchbook filled in a little.
Sunday was my work day, so I didn't do much other than say my farewells before heading into my real job.

Here are some of the sketches now filling up my book:









a Wuvable Oaf sketch from the wonderful Ed Luce



a sketch from Julia Wertz, formerly of Fart Party



a Spacetrawler-related sketch from Christopher Baldwin




SAILOR MOON, as sketched by Katie Shanahan




from Erika Moen, half of the Bucko team




Hellboy, as "sketched" by Vinny Navarrete



a top-notch top-knot from Sarah Olekysk



a Sex Wizard from Carolyn Main's Sex Wizards

Appreciation: 'Opus'

For the second outing of my Theatre Appreciation class, we went to see Michael Hollinger's play Opus performed by Portland Center Stage. I've been to a few PCS performances, but not many of their contemporary productions -- I've seen them perform King Lear, The Importance of Being Earnest, the obligatory production of A Christmas Carol; but the only modern/contemporary production I've seen from them was The Pillowman, which was merely OK. And therein lies my problem with most contemporary theater productions -- I find them only to OK, usually I find them to be incredibly pedestrian and predictable.
Case in point, Hollinger's Opus. While it wasn't a bad play (it was competent enough and the actor's all had their chops), it certainly wasn't an interesting piece, nor was it as provocative as it thought itself to be.
It was very much a "white people's problems" story ("Do I join the nice small quartet or do I take the audition for the Pittsburgh symphony?"; "If we perform at the White House, do we really have to play 'Hail to the Chief?'"; "We're gay professional orchestral musicians, yet we're still in the closet!"), like one long, highly produced, live episode of Friends. And had I come in with a check list of everything I'd expect to be in a modern/contemporary play, about modern/contemporary "problems," I would have checked off every single plot point on that list.
I find myself having the same issues with most of other contemporary forms of art, but that's another post for another day.

Appreciation: 'The Adding Machine'

This semester, I'm taking a Theater Appreciation class, wherein we will be taking in numerous productions throughout the Portland area. The first one of these was Theater Vertigo's production of Elmer Rice's The Adding Machine -- an American Expressionist piece from the 1920s.
It is the story of Mr Zero, a downtrodden, faceless, nameless man who, on the day of his twenty-fifth anniversary with his company, is told that he will be replaced by an adding machine -- a piece of machinery that not only will make his manual job obsolete, but that "can be operated by a high school girl" for less pay. Zero's reaction is to murder his boss. He is then tried, convicted, and sentenced to death.
In the play's second act, Rice skews the audiences expectations for Zero's redemption -- showing his fate to be anything but redemptional.

Expressionism is defined as a movement that "present[s] the world in an utterly subjective perspective, radically distorting it for emotional effect, to evoke moods or ideas." And this where Theater Vertigo's production really shined. The set was incredibly minimal, with only the most basic props used, and the makeup was stellar: masks and half-masks used to wonderful effect, helping to stretch a small company of actors into a much larger number of unique individual roles.

The story itself also hit a little close to home for me -- my employer having recently laid off nearly 10% of its unionized work force. Fortunately(?), I was not one amongst that number, but more than a few friends and co-workers were. So, seeing such a play as The Adding Machine with those lay-offs still in mind added another layer to the experience.


The Adding Machine runs 4/8/11-5/7/11, Thursday/Friday/Saturday only, with Thursday nights being pay-what-you-can. And, it's at Theater Theatre on SE Belmont -- a fantastic establishment for smaller local theater productions.
If you're able, I highly recommend this one.

Obits

Also, it seems a new Obits record has slipped in under the radar.
And it's a good one -- it doesn't cover much new ground since the first one, but the band sounds tighter and more confident as a whole.

some quick reviews

Last weekend, I rented Wes Craven's last offering -- My Soul to Take Take.
What could have been a pretty decent teen slasher film turned out to be little more than Wes Craven trying to remake Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street, by way of Virginia Woolf's The Waves -- a group of teenagers connected through a superfluous "other;" in this case, it's a Freddy Krueger-like mass murderer (the Riverton Ripper) with multiple personalities. The main characters of the story were all born on the night the Ripper supposedly died, and are believed throughout the community to each be an embodiment of one of the Ripper's various personalities.
It starts off interesting and with potential, but loses steam halfway through and then gives up completely by the end, leaving some gigantic plot holes in its wake.





I followed that one up with the Bava/Argento production, Demons.
I don't know why I got it into my head to check this one out; I'd attempted to watch it on numerous occasions, but always gave up about 20 minutes into it. But this time, I stuck it out and kept with it -- and I'm glad I did. While it does move at a slower-than-glacial pace at the beginning, it really picks up after a while and becomes a pretty damn fun, gory mess of a classic. And it even has a killer soundtrack to go along with it.
I recently found out there is a sequel to this one, so I'll probably pick that one up soon.

final

This is "rough" edit of my final project for my Final Cut Pro / video editing class. We were to edit together a montage, choosing one of four sets of criteria.

Mine is a montage that attempts to tell a story.
It is based on Peter Walsh's dream sequence from Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway. The narration is of the dream sequence, but read from a Russian translation of the text.
I may tweak a few of the cut points throughout the piece, but otherwise it is a done deal, and one that I am happy with the outcome.

Jay

Jay a video by G C Lee on Flickr.