For someone who wasn’t around fifty years ago to see the original airings of “The Flintstones”, watching Fred and Barney down a couple glasses of Busch beer may come as a bit of a shock. Younger generations commonly view the Flintstones as a family friendly comedy appropriate for all ages, but the show was initially intended for adults.
Fred and Barney’s casual drinking aside, this commercial has even more odd qualities in store. The hypnotic circle at the beginning, repeating of slogans, and Mr. Slate’s hallucinations make for an anomalous gem.
For some Adult Swim viewers, it was hard enough to believe that Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim’s grotesquely odd television series received a second season. To their dismay, Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job! premiered season five (season “cinco”) in February of this year. Although the series focuses on comedy, Wareheim claims that the show is greatly influenced by the awkwardness of David Lynch‘s work.
From the title alone, one will likely infer that “Nagasaki Ding-Dong” is not your average short film. Rather, Nagasaki seems to be an experiment on just how far one can stray from the norm. Filled with nauseating scenes and sounds, it’s unpleasant nature will leave weird enthusiasts satisfied with a weighty feeling of unease.
We’ll leave it to you to describe this… special… video for yourself. We’re just going to supply the background: this short film was created by commercial director and artist Nagi Noda for a short film compilation sponsored by Panasonic celebrating the Olympics. We haven’t seen the other nine films in the series (no one has for six years now), but we suspect that this poodle fitness video (a parody of fitness guru Susan Powter) was not quite what the corporate giant expected when they commissioned the project.
Mathieu Labaye’s tribute to his father, who suffered from multiple sclerosis when he was 29 years old, was confined to a wheelchair at 40, and died of pneumonia at the age of 55. Labaye has an indisputable talent for creating music and visual art that radiates a surplus of energy. Warning: like our last Saturday Short, “Orgesticulanismus” also contains some brief artistic nudity.
Celebrating the cinematically surreal, bizarre, cult, oddball, fantastique, strange, psychedelic, and the just plain WEIRD!
