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…

Now its my birthday

I turn 40 on Thursday, and I am having a wee social get together on Friday for some old pals and film friends. If your an old pal, and I’ve forgotten to invite you, there is a very good reason for that. No, it means I’ve forgotten to get in contact and feel free to contact me…you should know how.

Until then, a great song about festivity, Party Fears Two by The Asoociates, from that missed genius Billy MacKenzie, here at Idea Fix, where the 80’s electro never stops.

For Hitler’s birthday

A few visual items for The Fuhrer’s birthday.

One a funny artwork from the Unpop movement, “Hitler for The Gap”.

Another from the neo folk teen band, Prussian Blue (aka The Gaede twins), and their hilarious “Hitler Smiley Face” T- Shirt, clearly aimed at the youth market. That T shirt is classic and certain to piss off film industry wankers, so, I gotta get me one of those…

Plus another still, I found somewhere, of some hot Russian chick in a chic Nazi inspired outfit, looking like a sexy part of some new Russo fascist movement…Putin are you paying attention?

All just a small fragment of the legacy of a certain German Chancellor, for the future…

The (not so) Old Man and the Sea

I love a good cameo in a movie, so it was with great delight that I was asked to be appear in Stuart Simpson’s (demonsamoungus) new feature, Il Monstro Del Mar.

I was to play a gnarly fisherman who loved the sea, and espoused casual misogynies to his twenty year old son. Who was to get his comeuppance when a Giant tentacled sea monster dragged him to his death, at the bottom of Port Phillip Bay.

The shoot was a lot of fun. I got to drive a boat, fast, and knowing nothing about doing so, proceeded to crash the thing into the back of the camera vessel at full clip. A real James Bond moment. Bang. Or a JG Ballard motif, two boats wanting to mate as my boat slammed into the sexy rear of the other boat. Whatever it was, I thought both vessels were fucked, and that we would be swimming to shore, but only mild scratches were left on one vehicle. Lucky and Yikes!

After getting over the fright of our collision at sea, the real horror could begin as we set up tentacles and blood pumps and gore and went ballistic, culminating in a fall into the Bay in full costume. All great stuff.

Stuart Simpson is a great director, fun to work with, he worked at a good pace with a great concept and clear vision. Very happy to have been a small part of his new feature.

Here are two stills on land, for all you land lovers, from the shoot, one with me and Stu, and another of me alone as the proud doomed sea dog.

Lady Gaga spanked at St Jerome’s

Kristen told me about St Jerome’s, a cool club in NYC. And from this picture of popstar brat Lady Gaga getting a good spanking inside the clubs walls, lets just say it looks pretty cool to me, too.

Idea Fix is going on the road to Los Angeles (and maybe other US cities if I have the time). Three weeks in the US are coming up folks, stand by for mayhem, madness and reflections on the US zeitgeist 2009.

Until then, this…

The wonderful Scott Coffey

Actor, Indy filmmaker, surrealist, and sometime David Lynch collaborator, Scott Coffey has a wonderful website of his work, see here.

Its got some really cool content like shorts, clips, text, etc.

He made a feature recently with Oz’s Naomi Watts called, “Ellie Parker”, check it out! I saw it this week and loved it…amazing performance from Watts, edgy, avant garde, LA style funny and a great digi feature. Here is the trailer:

He has a new feature in the works, too, so he’s a filmmaker to watch, I’d say…

Check out two other clips of interest, one for the cool Radiohead song “Two Minute Warning” from the ‘other’ InRainbows disc, about some people fucking up a forest in Oregon with a pipeline, and a clip from a short called The Vision with a cameo from Lynch, both of  which I like. Both are found here on the video page of his site.

…”This is just a nightmare, soon we’re gonna wake up”…

Obama as Anti Christ

Here is an interesting video from Alex Jones about the fraud that is Obama, called The Obama Deception, while its slightly hysterical, it makes some salient points about an unaccountable, irresponsible and out of control elite behind world politics. Whether you buy some of the conspiracy stuff is up to you, but the point that Obama is a stooge for big finance, and all the old values of the Bush era, and beyond, seems to be held up by the facts since he took office. You won’t believe some of the info about him in this doco!

I’m going to write a post about Conspiracy theories as phenomenon this weekend to further develop some ideas raised here.

Here is part one and two of a 110 minute movie click to go to You Tube to watch the rest. Just watch these two ten minute clips… and you’ll want to watch the rest…

Lars Von Trier does Anti Christ

Lars. New film. Nature is Evil. New Trailer. Von Trier. Anti Christ. Nature’s Revenge. Dafoe. The Universe off its Axis. Enough said.