Tag Archives: Poetry

List Candidates

LIST CANDIDATE: DEAD MAN (1995)

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NOTE: Dead Man has been promoted to the List of the 366 Best Weird Movies ever made. Commenting is closed on this review, which is left here for archival purposes. Please visit Dead Man‘s Certified Weird entry to comment on this film.

DIRECTED BY: Jim Jarmusch

FEATURING: Johnny Depp, Gary Farmer, Lance Henriksen, Michael Wincott, Robert Mitchum, Crispin Glover, Iggy Pop, Billy Bob Thornton, Mili Avatal, Gabriel Byrne

PLOT:  Mild-mannered accountant Bill Blake heads west, becomes a wanted man after he

Still from Dead Man (1995)

shoots a man in self defense, and, wounded, flees to the wilderness where he’s befriended by an Indian named Nobody who believes he is the poet William Blake.

WHY IT’S ON THE BORDERLINE:  Dead Man is a lyrical and hypnotic film, and one that comes about as achingly close to making the List on the first pass as is possible.  The quality of the movie is no obstacle to its making the List, but the weirdness, while there, is subtle and must be teased out by the viewer.  There is a mystical and dreamlike tinge to Blake’s journey into death, but the strangeness is almost entirely tonal; Jarmusch’s artiness aside, it’s possible to view the movie as a rather straightforward, if quirky, indie Western.

COMMENTS:  Dead Man begins on a locomotive as a naif accountant is traveling from Cleveland to a the western town of Machine to begin a new life.  We see him on the train playing solitaire or reading a booklet on beekeeping.  He looks up to survey at his fellow passengers, who meet his glance with indifference.  The train’s whistle blows as the scene fades to black, accompanied by twanging chords from Neil Young’s guitar (sounding like abstract, electrified snippets stolen from a Morricone score).  The scene repeats and fades back in again and again, each time with the traveler glancing around the compartment to find his companions slowly changing: their dress becomes more rustic, their hair longer and more unkempt; female passengers become less frequent, firearms more common; the indifference in their eyes turns into quiet hostility.

Dead Man tells the story of an innocent who becomes a refugee after being caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.  It’s a standard story, but the way Jarmusch tells can be strange indeed.  This opening scene sets the rhythm for the movie: it proceeds in a series of slow pulses punctuated by fadeouts and anguished bursts from Young’s guitar, and it slowly shifts locale from the civilized to the wild.  The continual fading out and Continue reading LIST CANDIDATE: DEAD MAN (1995) →

Alfred Eaker's Fringe Cinema

VIDEO POETRY BY JOHN M BENNETT

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John M Bennett’s musical, aquatic, high octane avant poetry is not for the faint of heart, disciples of the orthodox religion called “linear thinking”, or for the post-Matrix, attention span challenged audience. But, Bennett and his work have a passionately loyal following which influences a small, tight group.

Bennett’s humor comes from the slimy trail of a nobly defiant mindset.  I recall an email I got from Bennett a few years ago, informing me that beatnik surrealist poet Philip Lamantia had died.  When I inquired the nature of that great poet’s death, Bennett confessed he didn’t know, but added, “I hope it was a suicide. That’s the only way a surrealist should die.”

Some of Bennett’s video poetry can be found on his site, by clicking on the link below.

http://www.johnmbennett.net/Video_Poetry_JMBennett.html

Bennett’s LUNA BISONTE PRODS has released a collection on DVD called Ahhh Dog which contains Fifteen Short Pieces, Studio 1-9, Be Blankand John M Bennett in Paris. It can be ordered for $30 US postpaid directly from Bennett himself at:

John M. Bennett
137 Leland Ave.
Columbus, OH 43214 USA

Checks made out to Bennett (or cash).

A gem of a book comes with the dvd, photography by C. Mehrl Bennett.

Fifteen Short Pieces is a WIS project collaboration. Poetry and performance by Bennett. Video: Nicholas Carras.

The first short piece is Door Chain. The video depicts a crow eating, juxtaposed to Bennett’s voice, reading ” double greasy your please hump staining pork ice whistle foaming in your pants name the crack bob…”

Cheek Wreck and Learned Duck are delightfully mischievous. Cheek Wreck depicts a row of plastic water bottles with bright red caps as Bennett growls,”cheek the sawdust from yr tumba falling down the steps leak the slaw…”

A man in a white shirt walks around in a circular motion, grainy from above, “duck and hover plot to ashen us a natter fucked and muttered not a hash spattered on the wall neck…”

Studio 1-9 and Be Blank bring in a third collaborator in Allen Revich who adds voice, flute, harmonica and shuffling.

Revich plays flute in Studio 9 and has a priceless, befuddled look on his face as Bennett reads. In Studio 8, Revich reads while Bennett looks bored, yawns, and falls asleep.

Be Blank is archetypal Bennett at his hammiest. Bennett grunts and spews Be Blank, Be Blank, Be Blank, be blank , BE blanK, Beeeee Blaaaaaaaank, twisting his mouth, googly eyed, postulating, melodramatic, as Revich stoically looks down and shuffles in place. If you can get through Be Blank without a cigarette, you are stronger than I am.

Be Blank and Studio 1 – 9 on Bennett’s website. Not on the DVD, but also on the  website, are four bizarre (even by Bennett standards) short videos; The Blur, Transmission, the Refusal , and The Intrusion, along with Bennett’s visual poetry, text poetry, and sound poetry.

Take your Bennett dissonance like an adult, and stock up on the smokes.

366 Exclusive, Shorts

366 EXCLUSIVE: “9″

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We are pleased to debut Alfred Eaker and Robbin Panet’s short film film “9” on the web.  This is the movie they made for the 2009 48 Hour Film Festival.  The rules of the contest festival are simple: every team has only 48 hours to complete the film, and each must incorporate three elements given by the festival : a character name, a line of dialogue, and a prop.  Look for a character named “Professor Sherman Kane,” a ball, and the line “I’m not talking to you.”

Rather than making a straightforward short that looked like everyone else, “9” takes an experimental approach, becoming a sepia-hued exploration of domestic abuse through the generations, in a Western setting.  The bizarre free-association poetry of John M. Bennet replaces traditional narration.  It runs approximately seven and a half minutes.

Alfred’s description of the making of the film can be read in his Reflections on the 48 Hour Film Festival and the “9” Diary.

9

[Our license to display “9” has expired.  We will inform you if this film is released, on DVD or otherwise, in the future.]

At the producers’ request, this film will not be released to YouTube or other video hosting sites, and will be available here for one month only.  UPDATE: Because this film was reviewed and linked from Rogue Cinema, we are leaving the film up for another week, until October 12, 2009.

Shorts

SHORT: THE THREATENED ONE (1999)

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threehalfstar

DIRECTED BY:  Signe Baumane

PLOT: An impressionistic interpretation of a Jorge Luis Borges poem featurning a bunny rabbit, a fox, a man and a woman.

The Threatened One: Rated PG-13 for cartoon bosoms and symbolic sex


WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD:  The dreamlike imagery, especially the flower that ejaculates flowers.

COMMENTS:  Baumane worked with Bill Plympton (who gets a thank you shout in The Threatened One‘s credits) on I Married a Strange Person! The two animators seem to be kindred spirits: they share a “squiggly” style of animation, where even the still frames move and breathe, as well as an absurd sense of visual humor.  The Threatened One adopts a drawing style reminiscent of a children’s book (only with a sea of blood and topless scenes) to illustrate Borge’s bittersweet poem about the consuming power of love.  Love is depicted as a predator, a toothy fox, but having your fleshed ripped by it’s fangs doesn’t seem like such a horrible fate in the end. The short is witty and whimsical, and David Rovin’s music punctuates the atmosphere perfectly. The only slight complaint is that the narrator’s reading, while competent, isn’t as inspired as the rest of the production.

The Threatened One is available on the collection Ten Animated Films by Signe Baumane. More information can be found on Signe Baumane’s website.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“For Borges and Baumane, love triggers the death of the individual.”-Chris Robinson, Unsung Heroes of Animation