Lando Meadows Must Die

Weird

(via jordanrecorded)

Rainbow Kitty Kitty: Two Farewells (For Our Fans)

rainbowkittykitty:

As some of you know, and some of you do not, our drummer Seth and guitarist Austin are both moving on to different parts of their lives. Seth is moving to Boston for awhile to do an internship and Austin is going off to get his PhD. Trey and I could not be prouder of either of them. They have both…

npr:

Emperor Scorpion Has 25 Babies at the Cincinnati Zoo! - ZooBorns

Weird

criterioncorner:

CRITERION ANNOUNCES AUGUST 2012 RELEASES!!!

wooooows. for the past few years, it seems as if criterion has been on a mission to single-handedly save august from being the dog days of summer, and so it’s not too surprising that their line-up for this august is patently insane. but still… wooooows. 

#620 LA PROMESSE (dir. Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne) 1996

welcome to the Criterion Collection, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne! their breakthrough film is still among their best, the story of a boy coming of age while working for his father (the great Olivier Gourmet) as a human trafficker. a light release with just some interviews and new subs, but this is a film worth owning as best you can. spare, evocative cover art is pitch-perfect.

#621 ROSETTA (dir. Dardennes again!) 1998

and here we are 2 years later, as the Dardennes claimed their first Palme d’Or with this story of an impoverished young woman struggling to support herself and her alcoholic mother. if it sounds like dreary stuff, that’s because it totally is, but those Belgian brothers bring it to life with a rare immediacy and a poetic touch that confounds the limits of verité cinema. perfectly pitched cover art, just over the girl’s shoulder as it should be.

#622 WEEKEND (dir. Andrew Haigh) 2011

welllll, what have we here? i’m a bit surprised by this, it slipped under my radar as a potential Criterion release under the IFC partnership, but it is hugely deserving of a place in the Collection. this is the time to be horribly reductive, but come august Weekend can no longer be referred to as a gay Before Sunset, cause this beautifully observed film is so much more. Disc is pretty loaded with goodies (but no commentary. boo) and the cover is as pitch-perfect as it was inevitable.

#623 LONESOME (dir. Paul Fejos) 1928

in a month loaded with essentials, this might be the neatest release of all. a rarity / cinephile fetish object for years and years, this early-era talkie is a crazed, stylistically restless visit to Coney Island on the fourth of july, from an unsung filmmaker / anthropologist / doctor / legend. it’s like Scott Pilgrim for the pre-Depression set. and the disc is packed with two other Fejos films, visual essays, and a commentary track, all wrapped up in some of the most striking Criterion artwork of the year.

#624 QUADROPHENIA (dir. Franc Roddam) 1979

what better time to release the cinema’s most rocking rebel yell than right before the start of the new school year? the year was 1979, the band was The Who, and the songs were all anthems. this is an anti-authority classic, and a release that Criterion has been building towards for some time. and hey, is that… Sting? more Sting in the Collection is always a good thing. i mean, it’s definitely *a* thing, at the very least. you get some interviews and an audio commentary from director Franc Roddam, himself. and the art… i mean, it’s Quadrophenia!

#157 THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS (dir. Wes Anderson) 2001

and so ends the dark age of The Royal Tenenbaums not being on blu-ray.

Eclipse Series 35: Maidstone and Other Films By Norman Mailer 

three films by everyone’s favorite dead curmudgeon: Maidstone (duh), Wild 90, and Beyond the Law. how Mailer’s episode of Gilmore Girls didn’t make the cut, we’ll never know.

At the time of filming, Jack Nicholson had just embarked on his longstanding relationship with Anjelica Huston. This made his scenes with her father, John Huston, rather uncomfortable, especially as the only time Anjelica was on set was the day they were filming the scene where Noah Cross interrogates Nicholson’s character with “Mr Gittes…do you sleep with my daughter?”

(via bbook)

jordanspeerart:

Murdertown - Soda Row

bbook:

These two people. They were in love with each other. The girl was very young, about seventeen or eighteen, I guess. And the guy was quite a bit older. He was kind of ragged in, wild. She was very beautiful, you know.

criterioncorner:

Up Close & Personal: #611 BEING JOHN MALKOVICH (dir. Spike Jonze) 1999

“Do you know what a metaphysical can of worms this portal is?”

one of the year’s most anticipated Criterion releases is finally here, and it’s a thing of beauty. there’s been a lot of controversy (or what amounts to controversy in the world of niche home video, i guess) as to whether or not Criterion should have stuck with some of the film’s more familiar artwork for the cover, but their commitment to a minimalist aesthetic informs the entire package. it’s clean and spare and blithely contains the sheer insanity that’s contained within. i’m not sure the subdued, anti-expressionist feel was the best choice, but it works. oh, and you get a little pic of Malkovich dancing in a sarong, so… yeah, i’d say this is pretty special.

The Criterion Collection edition of Being John Malkovich hits stores 5/15/12. keep an eye out for my review on movies.com.

(p.s. sorry for the picture quality, my DSLR is on loan)

lettertojane:

Sunset Boulevard 

In the film’s original opening sequence, newly arrived bodies at the Los Angeles morgue talk about how they got there:

The corpse lying next to me asks how I died and I say I drowned. And he asks me how can a young guy like you drown and I say, “Well, first I was shot in the back,” and then he says, yeah, he was shot also. He was a Chicago gangster killed in Los Angeles. Then a little kid on a slab across from me says, “I drowned too—swimming with my friends off the Santa Monica pier. I bet him I could hold my breath two minutes.” Some dame is over by the kid and she says he shouldn’t be unhappy as his parents will come and take him to a nice place. Then from way down there’s this great big Negro corpse and he says, “Hey man, did you get the final score on the Dodger game before you got it?” and I say, no, I died before the morning papers came out… .

Charles Bracket, Wilder’s writing partner, hated the opening scene; he thought it was “morbid and disgusting.” He wasn’t alone. When Paramount previewed Sunset Boulevard in Evanston, Illinois, headquarters of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, the audience jeered and filled out preview cards deriding Wilder’s masterpiece. When Wilder complained to Paramount that Evanston, Illinois, was simply too unsophiticated for his movie, the studio demographers sent Wilder’s Gothic take on Hollywood to a town they insisted was the most sophisticated in America: Great Neck, Long Island. But they hated Sunset Boulevard, too. “The most sophisticated town in America” walked out on it.

Paramount reacted to the preview to the preview audiences’ disdain by refusing all showings for the next six months, and Wilder was sent back to rewrite the opening scene. The final version that made it into the film was no less bizarre, opening with the corpse of Joe Gillis, the young screenwriter, telling the story of how he wound up floating facedown in Norma Desmond’s swimming pool.

- Sam Kashner and Jennifer MacNair, “The Bad And The Beautiful” on Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard

One of my all time favorite films.

(via bbook)

criterioncorner:

ADAM YAUCH’S TOP 10 CRITERION DVDs

Start with #10 and work your way to the top.

“Adam Yauch is a founding member of the Beastie Boys. Recently he created a new division of his company Oscilloscope Laboratories called Oscilloscope Pictures (oscilloscopepictures.com) for the sole purpose of distributing films. He even hired two guys from ThinkFilm to come over to his new company. At first we were a little concerned that Adam intended to compete with Criterion, but then we thought it over and, honestly, we have been doing this for a long time and are not threatened by Adam’s new company. The groundbreaking DVD The Beastie Boys Video Anthology is currently available from the Criterion Collection. So right there that proves we have the upper hand.”

(via bbook)

Seriously, one of the few just perfect albums.  Front to back, not a missed fucking note or beat.  Almost unbelievable. 

inothernews:

“Where the fuck is Godot?”

(via bbook)

bbook:

“I love men. We’re so stupid.”

-John Cassavetes

Just got done reading it.  It took me awhile to get immersed into the world, but after I did I really enjoyed it.  Powerful stuff.

Does any one who is a psychologist or a major in it know of where I should start looking into the psychology of death obsession?  Don’t be freaked out, it is for a paper on modern death obsession in Don Delillo’s White Noise.