Send ups of the Sydney Underground Directors

Well, I’m ticked off with SUFF (Sydney Underground Film Festival) director Stefan Popescu at present… again!

More, later on all this later…if I can be bothered relating it.

It seems some other people are ticked off as well. Here are two videos from some unknown filmmakers ( ….not me, really!), sending up the two SUFF directors, that someone pointed out to me at You Tube.

The Stefan one, is actually a little like the real person, dare I say it!

The MUFF X trailer

The Misogyny of Lars Von Trier’s AntiChrist

Just saw Von Trier’s AntiChrist, probably the greatest film about Misogyny ever made. The women (She) deforms and allows her own kid to fall from an apartment window, then cuts off her own clit after torturing her husband, when he finds out the truth about her psychotic ways. Don’t let film critic wankers over intellectualize this movie, the truth of AntiChrist is staring you right in the face. Von Trier is a deeply subversive reactionary…
Some of the fun chat from my facebook page:

Jacinta Palmer

Do you mean to say the film itself was misogynistic, or merely addressing misogyny? I didn’t think it was misogynistic at all – Von Trier was playing with the notions of woman as unbound and untameable Nature and man as unmovable Logic and Rational Thought. I thought he missed a few good opportunities along the way though; it came off a little clumsily. If Lynch had directed it…

Jacinta Palmer

(does the above make me a film critic wanker? haha)

Richard Wolstencroft

Well both. He was addressing the topic, but the film itself is misogynistic, I’d say. Of course due to post modernism all kinds of alternative readings are possible and Von Trier knows this completely, which is how he gets away with it…his cruel laughter can be heard behind much of the films last act.

Jacinta Palmer

Ah, postmodernism. You can get away with anything, it’s true. Best way to shield a prejudice is by overtly stating it and then waiting for someone respected to cry out “irony!”

Richard Wolstencroft

Yes, the addiction to critical irony is so passe. What is daring is the reading of misogyny. Its so blunt and to the point. Von Trier has been accused of it before, but I never agreed fully with the criticism, his other films have different core meanings. Here I see it fully. This immoral “I don’t give a fuck” portrait of misogyny is daring. The nature is Evil, women is nature, women is evil equations are present all through the film. The male is a Genesis/Adam like innocent figure, trying to solve the riddle of the female, through psychology, sex and at last force… only to swarmed by faceless women at the end of the film.

Mark Savage

Sounds fascinating, Mr. Richard.

Mark Savage

Damn US release isn’t until October. The distribs here really drag their feet with non-US films.

Frank Howson

Sounds like the crazy women I date.

Jacinta Palmer

The only thing stopping me from embracing the misogyny reading (which definitely seemed overt in places) is the levels of comedy and farce which seemed to almost dominate the last quarter of the film. I could hear Von Trier laughing, definitely, but I can’t quite put my finger on who he was laughing at.

Mark Savage

But craziness isn’t gender exclusive.

Richard Wolstencroft

Of course, Mark. Misandry is featured in many, many great movies…and for darn good reason! But AntiChrist, when you let it resonate with you, is about women.

Jacinta Palmer

I’ve only just realised that the symbol for ‘woman’ makes up part of the title.

Richard Wolstencroft

Of course. Von Trier hides his meaning in plain sight. Manderlay is all about how when you liberate slaves of all kinds things turn to shit. That’s what Manderlay is about and that is the films meaning. No hidden Deleuzian reading about multiplicity… just bare ontological facticity.

Mark Savage

Actually, I was just talking about humans in general, not the film. I understand ANTICHRIST is about women. I’m hanging out to see it (have been for quite a while).

Richard Wolstencroft

Of course. In general its like my friend Alex Spalck said in his cool song, “I’m Lost Little Girl” from Pankow, “Misanthropes are always right · Misogynists quite often”…words to live by, my friends, words to live by…

Antichrist logo with the symbol for woman:

Fred West Side story

Pretty funny…

Bill Killed…by jerking off in a closet.

David Carradine hung himself jerking off via auto asphyxiation in a Thai hotel. Who knew all Uma Thurman had to do was give Bill a length of rope and closet and she’d have no need to Kill Bill.

In all honesty though, he will be missed! He was great in Kill Bill 1 when you hardly saw him and just heard that voice. But the family bull at the end of KIll Bill 2 was a bit of a let down compared with the rest of the film. I’d like to see both films cut together though as QT has long promised…

DC was a great actor, love that Kung-Fu show, and its good he enjoyed his comeback before going out doing what he loved…acting, and wanking that is.

Michael Moynihan’s I Love a Parade T Shirt

I got a T Shirt in LA off Brian M Clark with the following design on it (see below) and wore it around the US, and at The Opening Night of the St Kilda Film Festival, 2009. I think its very funny…

If you’d like your own, you can order it here.

It was designed by Mr. Michael Moynihan Esq, former Boyd Rice collaborator, the force behind band Blood Axis, international man of mystery and all round interesting cultural figure. I have been reading his superb European Culture journal TYR, so more on him here later….

Order a T Shirt and remember I Love a Parade.

Lou Reed visits Australia in the 70’s

Aussie director Richard Lowenstein posted this on his facebook page today, and I just had to share it here after viewing it. A classic interview with Reed in the 70’s.

Vale JG Ballard…long live the Metro Centre!

JG Ballard passed away on the weekend. An amazing literary talent has left us, one whose later works were, in my humble opinion, sheer genius.

Best source for stories about his death is ballardian.com here. Its a great site run by Simon Sellers. Its a little bit of a pomo wankfest, but informative, detailed and sincere.

I wrote this post below Sellers obit, comments and tributes are welcome there:

“A genius, who saw the future. He didn’t write science fiction in his later years he wrote science fact. His prescience about a new form of fascism being the only legitimate form of resistance to later day Capitalism, in his last novels, could not be closer to the truth. Viva The Metro Centre, James! Something is coming, you won’t live to see it, JG…but many will…”

I think it says all I need to say…

Here is a visual tribute to one of Ballard’s last books, the masterful career ending Kingdom Come, with its Metro Centre, a mall that acts as a site of a people’s uprising. The mock Metro Centre website is here. I love these photos, a guy looking in a rubbish bin with a light emanating from it, a guy depressed in a shipping department with headline “Sale Now On”, other ads promoting losing it and going completely crazy, and the last chestnut, “The Wait is almost over”. This is an advertising campaign supposedly designed by and featuring character David Cruise from “Kingdom Come”, that was created to publicise said novel. Its intentions are to unsettle and unhinge people with the utter and complete emptiness of capitalism, thereby fostering some form of new fascist revolution. Indeed, that is the purpose of the book, also. Don’t believe me? Read the book… tell me if I wrong…

Doll fucker

Check out this weird shit.

Its from a doco called Love Me Love My Doll from the BBC US, sort of like a real life Lars and the Real Girl. Except instead of the handsome Ryan Gosling, you have some weirdo who looks the black member of Culture Club.

The source for this odd tidbit? Mr Mark Savage (of course), turned me onto it, at his site Phantom of Pulp, see link below. He is master of this kind of weird shit. He also recommends a doco called My car is My love, that sounds equally bizarre about people who are sexually attracted to their cars. Very Ballardian.

Enjoy this freak, freaksters…

The Comedian was a fascist

I liked Zach Snyder’s film version of Watchmen. I mean its such strong material, its hard to go wrong? You had to truncate it for a feature. I enjoyed it a lot, and don’t get the disappointment some have expressed about it…

Jon Hewitt gave the comic to me back in 1990 during the making of Bloodlust and said, “You must read this”. I always hated comics but trusted his immaculate taste. Suffice to say I loved it then, and thought, “Wow this really turns super hero’s on their head…”. Its taken 18 years since then until someone made it for the big screen. Its mood is right, its tone correct. Its similar to the mood and feel of the Christopher Nolan Dark Knight Batman film. We are seeing scarier and more realistic super heros, which is good, as its a boring genre if the envelope is not pushed…

Of course I liked the tragic Comedian best, who dies at the start of Watchmen, the tough fascist who discovers his conscience when he gets wind of Ozymandias radical ’scorched earth’ plan to destroy part of humanity, in order to save it. The Comedian’s character is complex, he is a rapist, and murders someone he describes as a ‘chink’ in Vietnam, who he got pregnant. But, The Comedian has another, softer side, that of a tortured soul burdened by his realism, nihilism and cynicism. This Yin and Yang makes for a great character. The mixture of humour as a fascist trait, is a very clever addition from Alan Moore. It recalls a dark Nietzschean laughter. Many fascists are of course the worlds greatest pranksters, trouble makers and jokers… and faced with the universe as it is, and the human predicament as it stands, can you blame them?  What else can one do, eventually, but laugh?

A great performance from Jeffrey Dean Morgan as the smiley face badge carrying fascist super hero/psycho, lit up his scenes. Rorschach is no slouch of a character either, his intense 1950’s style driven revenge machine is dynamic in the film. So, too the hot latex outfit of the Silk Spectre for other reasons. In fact they’re all pretty cool characters, in their way.

Anyway, Watchmen is out on the big screen infecting the young and impressionable minds of the new generations with its dystopian message of purge, and renewal…Hahhahahahhaha