Rewriteable Content

Fudge Factory Comics-.mov

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 14:36:47 -0700

16mm film about Los Angeles (unfinished)

Wed, 01 Aug 2007 13:18:18 -0700

this film remains unfinished due to broken film and god's wrath

Stranger

Wed, 15 Aug 2007 15:52:58 -0700

Natural Blond

Wed, 20 Jun 2007 18:32:08 -0700

Riot Poster 2

Wed, 20 Jun 2007 18:30:44 -0700

BlankFaces

Wed, 20 Jun 2007 18:28:58 -0700

thoughts2pen

Wed, 20 Jun 2007 18:27:48 -0700

Beckett

Sat, 19 May 2007 12:38:01 -0700

Thinker-Panorama

Sat, 19 May 2007 12:36:02 -0700

Waltz

Sat, 19 May 2007 12:33:07 -0700

Dancing Shoes

Sat, 19 May 2007 12:31:42 -0700

Last Call

Sat, 19 May 2007 12:30:10 -0700

Dave Brubeck @ The Hollywood Bowl

Fri, 14 Sep 2007 14:21:21 -0700

I cannot comprehend how one appendage can be so nimble, while others begin to fail. Dave Brubeck steadied himself on the shoulders of his quartet walking to his piano on stage, but then sat down and played with hands as precise and quick as when his records were first cut.

These are men in their 80's, and as they took to their instruments there was no contesting their "cool." They've been making music twice as long as we have been listening. It should come as no surprise they do so, so perfectly.

I wish I had video of Brubeck bassist, Michael Moore's solos. His eyes closed, head down close to the neck of his upright; dancing his gray goatee back and forth as he mashed and slid over its strings. The quartet sounded flawless. Fresh and unrehearsed, I can only imagine the years of practice and memory that have gone into their harmonies and improvised choruses.

The original West Coast sound on a summer west coast night.

[mp3] Dave Brubeck - Take Five

ed: Special thanks to Patrick Woodward, for the only pictures of the event on the internet.

New Band of Horses - "Is There A Ghost"

Fri, 14 Sep 2007 14:21:20 -0700

"Is There A Ghost" does more than just tickle my fancy, the song caters to some of my most fundamental musical pleasantries: charming timbre accenting crooning vocals, reverb thick production, and a kinetic energy that respects the parameters of pop history. The lead off track on Cease To Begin starts with as much immediacy as it ends. The song, ranking in at a few seconds over the 3-minute mark, is an emotional bullet train that has the trajectory that never falters from its straight and narrow course. It's overly simplistic in its circulatory design; its verse-chorus designation effortless loops like the rounding tires of any forward moving vehicle. The song in no way reaches the levels of complication or experimentation that one tends to search for in modern rock to validate its placement in our ears (a type of litmus test for the musical elite). But with all the bogies and miss hits that come to bat in our stadium of sound, Band of Horses have hit a line drive, out of the park, home run for our attention span.

[mp3] Band of Horses - Is There A Ghost

Dave Brubeck @ The Hollywood Bowl

Thu, 30 Aug 2007 17:05:01 -0700

Liars present Liars

Wed, 29 Aug 2007 13:42:01 -0700

It's some sort of heart attack. The new Liars album begins in a frantic chase of adrenaline, a one-way train through a Dali desert with the four corners of horizon rushing in on the chaotic, disconcerting action that lay at the canvas center. It is quite possibly the most straightforward entry into a Liars album that one could envision with enough texture and disturbia to get one's usual knocks off. But this straightforwardness is only the beginning to an album that is peppered with Liars' practiced efforts to write "real songs" as they had previously reported. Track two "Houseclouds" is a more fully formed pop effort with singalong type vocals and a jingle jangle of a synth line. This fun runs at a perpendicular junction to Liars' previous concept gone underground Drum's Not Dead to form a strange dichotomy of pop tradition and outside the borders, off canvas brush strokes of experimental rock.

Within these last two comparisons spans the spectrum of the Liars catalog and a diversity that is reminiscent of the clich

Daft Punk present ELECTROMA film

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 18:01:44 -0700

I'd agree. Making some of the worlds best electronic music probably isn't fulfilling enough. Having lyrics written about you; "the first guy playing Daft Punk to the rock kids,"1 set up as a 2001 monolith shift in hipster understanding - Might merit a journal entry, but you've had entire albums translated into an anime film2, and are in the habit of throwing live shows heralded as: "The best concert of any summer3 " so you're not really sweat'n it.

Might as well go ahead and make another movie.

[mov] Thomas Bangalter & Guy-Manuel De Homem-Christo - Electroma
The quest of two robots in becoming human.
Release Date: OCTOBER 15 2007

[mp3] Daft Punk - Face To Face (Fabriclive. Cut Copy rmx)
[mp3] Daft Punk - Harder, Faster, Better, Stronger (OK Ikumi rmx)
____________________________
1 "Loosing My Edge," LCD Soundsystem
2 Kazuhisa Taken

When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts

Sun, 26 Aug 2007 05:59:49 -0700

It's another beautiful day in West Los Angeles, and I've spent the afternoon in my apartment weeping after witnessing the devastation and crippled humanity brought to light in, When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts.

This four hour documentary, directed by Spike Lee, is an untainted portrayal of the state of emergency in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and the communities appalling struggle to receive aid. The tragedy occurred two years ago, next week.

Told via first person interviews, there is no escape from the heart-retching reality of a city virtually abandoned by its own government (there to pick up the scraps only after the lives were lost). It is a black pit of unthinkable stories: a wheelchair ridden woman washed away to drown - her husband unable to come to her aid, a son helpless to provide his mother with medication - forced to spend four sweltering days in the Convention Center next to her corpse. Over 1,800 men, women and children where killed during and after the storm, 700 of those in the New Orleans, many left to rot floating in flood water or cast to the shoulders of I-10 for well over a week.

Natural disasters are clearly terrible events, which are unmanageable at some level; however, the national disaster in New Orleans only truly came once the storm had vanished. From the gaze of most News watching Americans, people saw a mandatory evacuation and thought - why did so many people chose to stay in a death trap? Aren't they partially responsible for their fate? The answers to that are: 1) While the evacuation might have been mandatory, there was little to no aid for the poor and elderly to make their way out of the city. How can an elderly couple leave the Lower Ninth Parish without transportation, extra food, medication or water? 2) The Superdome and Convention Center were meant as temporary refuge for citizens during the hurricane, but by the third/fourth day were of no use without the deployment of Federal troops and aid*. The water had been shutdown, the plumbing overrun and the bodies were piling up, yet this was looked at as the community safe-hold.

A slew of rumors swept the news that people were being murdered and even children raped in the Convention Center; however, every level of police and government official has dismissed both as false. Despite the falsities, the claims further fueled the idea that these citizens were savages and brought the chaos upon themselves. While images of people looting electronics are disheartening, it does not dismiss the dire needs of a city or represent the community as a whole.

A fury of finger pointing was conducted after the devastation between: the heads of government - Bush, Rice, Rove and Chertoff, FEMA - Michael Brown, and local and state officials - Kathleen Blanco and Ray Nagin. Chances are the fumble was caused by a combination of all these elected officials, but Michael Brown was the one who went down with the wreckage. It only takes a quick glance at Brown's background (a decade as commissioner of the Arabian Horse Assoc) to realize he had no authority, outside of political ties, to manage any sort of Federal Emergency team. Brown had been forced to resign from the AHA, and needed a new gig - he just happened to pick FEMA out of the grab bag of government positions thrown at candidates who "fit the bill."

Does George Bush hate black people (as Kanye put it)? Probably not, and I hope that somehow I (or this film) didn't just preach to the choir and leave Conservatives dismissing this as a political attack. This event was infinitely bigger than the political aisle - if you don't believe me, I'll go out and vote for Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) in 2008 just to prove it to you. It's about the sanctity of human life, and our government's responsibility to put an equal stake in everyone. I truly believe Katrina is our great nation's largest failure in the last 100 years. I also recognize that my hurt/anger is a product of the United States' greatness, and feel blessed to be given the opportunity to hold my government to a high standard.

Over seventy countries pledged monetary donations including: Kuwait ($500 million), South Korea ($30 million). Cuba and Venezuela were first to pledge $1 million and various aid (canned food, doctors, medicine); however, the US denied these donations.

Please take the time to educate yourself about this national disaster by watching When the Levees Broke. It's on HBO all month, available for rent on Netflix and purchase on Amazon.

Donate to Direct Relief

*The Coast Guard should be seen as heroes during Katrina - restlessly saving people from their roofs via helicopter.

Sigur Ros present Heima film + B-sides

Fri, 24 Aug 2007 17:18:58 -0700

Sigur Ros may be the benefactors of one of the most beautiful video catalogs in rock music. All of the band's videos relay the epic landscape of their home in Iceland as well as incorporate the crisp scenic beauty that one is sure to find through any time spent out doors in the countryside. Sitting in isolation in the northern Atlantic, Iceland, as portrayed be Sigur Ros, can be a place rooted in mysticism, a description that is well fit for all those who tag on the word "alien" when they describe the band's music. It is only appropriate then that a documentation of the band playing for the people in their homeland would consist of the same mesmerizing beauty and painstaking care that their previous filmed ventures have. Entitled Heima for "at home", the film follows Sigur Ros as they play for their own people in arenas that span from grand productions in forest clearings to small acoustic reenactments as their audience sits upon a small gymnasium floor (and I thought my seats at the Hollywood Bowl were good). With the inclusion of the companion album Hvarf-Heim, it looks as though Heima will likely be the source for all those that need a little something to fill their Sigur Ros yearnings, aural or otherwise.

[mp3] Sigur Ros - O Fridur
[mp3] Sigur Ros - Sigur 9 A
[mp3] Sigur Ros - Fonklagi / The Funk Song (Live In Reykjavik 1998)
[mp3] Sigur Ros - Rokklagi / The Rock Song (Live In Reykjavik 1999)

Andy Goldsworthy - Rivers and Tides

Wed, 22 Aug 2007 15:11:55 -0700

Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,
Alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams
And our desires. Although she strews the leaves
- Wallace Stevens

Scottish sculptor Andy Goldsworthy, makes artwork outside. Sometimes permanent (like the wall depicted here), but often fleeting as he arranges leaves by color in pools of water, or freezes broken ice one piece to another till they are columns weaving in and out of a boulder.

There seems something valuable in putting great effort and investment into things purposefully temporary. Creating something that may be destroyed on its completion. How would your approach to it change? How would that variable of instability alter your perspective? What a worthwhile lesson in patience and motive.

Often, art is an effort to emulate nature. An apt tribute to turn to nature itself and manipulate native materials into sculpture in their own environment. Goldsworthy orchestrates new shapes and arranges new colors in harmony with their surroundings though they would not occur naturally in them.

The pictured work is Goldsworthy's commissioned piece installed outside Stanford University's Cantor museum. A long stone wall starting like a fossilized spine in the ground and then descending, revealed by a hole that feels like might have been escavated around it. Called "stone river" the wall winds in ox bows till it dries up at the the other end.

The process of Goldsworthy's work is best understood in the documentary about him: Rivers and Tides. Art is probably most powerful in person than art see on film. Ironic that the union of film and Goldsworthy's often short lived work becomes one of the few ways to see it at all. Rivers and Tides is an inspiring product of this colaboration. Beautiful filmed, it quietly conveys the calm and commitment that is given over in creating each piece.

[mov] Stanford University - Stone River
[www] Thomas Riedelsheimer - Rivers and Tides