Gus Van Sant does interviews for Interview Magazine. In the latest issue he is talking to Zac Efron on the phone, you can read a longer section of the interview here. It’s funny to see how two people from different generations try to get together. But also not really much more. If you’re not familiar with High School Musical star Zac Efron the following video (I found posted on Dianocalypse) will give you a taste of his manifold talents. He’s playing in the movie Me and Orson Welles that is going to be released soon.
Here’s a clip of one of the most absurd movies ever featuring John Travolta and Jamie Lee Curtis. It’s supposed to be a sexy crime movie that takes place in the “gym scene”. But it’s actually not much more then an embarassing fitness video. Apart from this scene I don’t even recommend it from a trash point of view.
Ever jerked off while staring at pictures of yourself jerking off? Then you should be able to identify with the hero of “Watch Out”, an independent movie that is released on DVD theses days. It’s an adaption of a book that tells the story of a guy who is in love with himself and who’s got a sexual realationship with a blow-up doll he prepares so it’s got his face. I haven’t seen the movie yet but it looks entertaining especially because it’s main character is played by a cute actor called Matt Riddlehoover (who I think makes the nacism of his movie charakter understandable). Here’s a teaser of the movie (you also find two theatrical trailers and dates for upcoming screenings on the website). Do you think this is a very gay phenomena by the way?
I actually heard of this artist/film director the first time yesterday when a friend of mine told me about plans for a Smith-conference in Berlin in automn. I hope I’m not the only person here who’s not familiar with this guy who some people even call the most influencial US artist of the last fifty years. This is what I know now: Smith is a pioneer of the (queer) underground cinema and of performance art, combining early Hollywood/ B-Movie-kitsch and Orientalism with his own campy and abstract style. But I don’t wanna bore you with boring second-hand information, so I’ll just post you a link to UbuWeb here were you’ll find an article about Mr. Smith and three of his movies – his most famous one is “Flaming Creatures” from 1963. I also posted a youtube-trailer for a documentation about him. Thanks, Tim.
It’s one of these movies you saw once and always told yourself that you should see it but you never did because it is kind of exhausting. But I think it’s worth it. It was released 1982 as one of the last one of the so-called “Midnight Movies” (non-mainstream movies that were shown in US-cinemas in the nighttime). Last week director Slava Tsukerman’s new movie “Perestroika” was released in the US. But I must admit that it looks kind of boring.
The Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York is showing an exhibition of John Waters at the moment and that’s getting quite a lot of publicity in the US (even Kanye West recommends it on his Blog). Here are two videos in which Waters talks about the exhibition himself. He’s working as a photographer since the Nineties mostly doing snapshots of his favourite movies from a TV. But at the exibition he also shows objects – I especially like the one with the Turners. I also found out that his movie “Fruitcake” starring Johnny Knoxville is supposed to be released this year. And to emphasize that blog is finally not much more than a mere extension of youtube, I’m also posting a hilarious scene from “Desperate Living” here.
On April 1st the second season of Isabella Rosselinis “Green Porno”-short films series produced by Sundance Channel has started. While last year she played bugs and insects to illustrate their sex lifes, this time she exlores the sex life of sea creatures. I haven’t heard about the whole thing until yesterday evening so I was glad to find out that you can watch both season one and season two completely on www.sundance.com/greenporno. I especially like the fish costumes. I’ve also found an interview with Rosselini about the series she gave recently, it’s here.
On Saturday HBO is going to show an adaption of “Grey Gardens”, a documentary from 1975 that portrayed the everyday lives of two women living nearly totally isolated in a sleazy mansion in South Hampton. The women were Edith “Big Edie” Ewing Bouvier Beale and her daughter Edith “Little Edie” Bouvier Beale, the aunt and first cousin of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. A few years before the movie was recorded a magazine had revealed the bad living conditions of the women and caused a scandal. I think the documentary can be seen like a herald for today’s reality TV. You can watch it on youtube (-> cut into pieces, it sadly starts with part 2/11). What I didn’t know (but at the same time doesn’t really surprise me) is that the movie seems to attract especially gay people. There is even a musical version of the film. And a Rufus Wainwright song called “Grey Gardens”. The HBO movie is going to show the who life stories of the BB/GG-women featuring Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore. Could be interesting.
Saving the world is a hard job, especially when you’re not only surpressed by your omnipresent mother but by a whole people. The series “Queen Millennia” was developed by anime legend Leiji Matsumoto (he did e.g. Daft Punk’s Interstella 5555-video) and was my favourite cartoon when I was a child. But it’s like a lot of anime stuff not really/only adressed to children I think, the first episode for example starts with the main character’s parents being blown up and the whole athmosphere of the series is kind of depressing. There are rumours that you can download the whole series from a few torrent-websites but somebody told me that dowloading stuff could be illegal. You can also watch all episodes on Youtube – at least in german (the german version of the series is actually the only complete version you can get because for the english version it was disrespectfully cut and mixed with another series). It’s a nice leisure-time pursuit actually.
A few weeks ago a friend of mine told me about this really bizarr American phenomena called “Hell House”, I actually never heard of it. Hell Houses are Helloween attractions created by fundamentalist christians to show their children in some sort of shock therapy what would happen to them if they live in sin (-> they’d burn hell of course). These installations resemble haunted houses, actors play creepy scenes in which all sorts of “sin” (the usual ones like abortion, homosexuality, pre-marital sex etc.), hell and sometimes also heaven are depicted. Here’s the trailer of a documentary about one of the most famous hell houses located in Texas by director George Ratliff. I’m really excited to see it.
Gus Van Sant does interviews for Interview Magazine. In the latest issue he is talking to Zac Efron on the phone, you can read a longer section of the interview here. It’s funny to see how two people from different generations try to get together. But also not really much more. If you’re not familiar with High School Musical star Zac Efron the following video (I found posted on Dianocalypse) will give you a taste of his manifold talents. He’s playing in the movie Me and Orson Welles that is going to be released soon.
