A Couple From The Censored Eleven

The Censored Eleven are eleven Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes Cartoons that were withheld from syndication with United Artists in 1968. Why were they censored? Mostly because of racism and the prevalence of a wide number of black-face jokes and depictions.

Here's the list:
"Hittin' the Trail to Hallelujah Land" (1931)
"Sunday Go to Meetin' Time" (1936)
"Clean Pastures" (1937)
"Uncle Tom's Bungalow" (1937)
"Jungle Jitters" (1938)
"The Isle Of Pingo Pongo" (1938)
"All This and Rabbit Stew" (1941)
"Coal Black and De Sebben Dwarfs" (1943)
"Tin Pan Alley Cats" (1943)
"Angel Puss" (1944)
"Goldilocks and the Jivin' Bears" (1944)

So here are a few "highlights" from the list.

All This and Rabbit Stew
Bugs Bunny and The Horrific Stereotype. Black Elmer Fudd?


Coal Black and De Sebben Dwarfs
Clampett's jazz-age reimagining of the fairy tale. According to Wikipedia, this is the most frequently defended of the eleven.

Guitar Drag

This short film by Christian Marclay is simple, but quite provocative. In the film a plugged in electric guitar is dragged around San Antonio from the back of a pick-up truck with a rope. This is an amazingly inflammatory work and absolutely riveting. It makes me deeply uncomfortable, though I'm not entirely sure why.

Guitar Drag

Polish Raga Bhangra Hip Hop?

Courtesy of Wired and No Fear of the Future, I bring you the fine fruits of globalization: Masala Sound System. It's a Polish group with a penchant for Indian rhythyms and hip hop sensibilities.

What more can I say? You can't make this up.

Masala - Od Tarnobrzegu po Bangladesz


Masala - Rewolucja w Nas (Festiwal Gwiazd 2007)

Der Fuehrer's Face

I owe a lot to a film history course I took with Michael Powell. Many of the excellent surrealist and avant-garde films I have posted I first saw in his course. This is another clip in this category, and probably the most amazing. It's probably most notable for being the film in which you can hear Donald Duck say "Heil Hitler!" about fifty times. Hyper-patriotic, racist, and Disney: Magical.

Der Fuehrer's Face

Rose Hobart

Rose Hobart is an experimental film from 1936 by Joseph Cornell. It features the titular actress in the b-movie East of Borneo. Cornell re-edited the footage along with other found footage to create, along with the already posted Meshes of the Afternoon, one of the most important American experimental films.

I couldn't dig up an embeddable version, so here's a link to a wonderful ubuweb entry about Joseph Cornell, information about the film, and of course, the work in its entirety.

The Avalanches

Supposedly these Australian vinyl wizards have a new record coming out eventually. Until then I content myself with Since I Left You, which is much more than a small comfort. It's hard for me to believe this record came out in 2000. The videos for the two singles, I also, incidentally find particularly enjoyable. In fact, I probably like them better than the songs.

Frontier Psychiatrist


Since I Left You


I'd Rather Dance With You
Not The Avalanches, but The Kings of Convenience. Included simply because it is sweetest music video to ever be set in a dance studio.

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders

In 1970, Jaromil Jires, released a movie called "Valerie a tyden divu," or "Valerie and Her Week of Wonders." This Czech movie is supposed to be a stunning and otherwordly series of dreams and hallucinations by which a girl first experiences menstruation. I have yet to see the movie, but fell in love with the soundtrack released by the good folks on Finders Keepers. So, I queued it up on Netflix, and hopefully watching it won't be as disastrous as the time I tried to watch Vampyros Lesbos. In any case, here are some clips of what promises to be an amazing movie.

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders

Girls Gone Wild

Here are the trailers to a series of films about teenage girls being wild, violent, sexual, and criminal... sort of. Five trailers of teen delinquent exploitation films from 1957 and 1958. Sensationalist gold.

Live Fast, Die Young


Girls on the Loose


Teenage Doll


Reform School Girl


High School Hellcats

Perils of Pornography and Perverts

Let us not forget that weekends also have their dark sides: the creeping sexual perversion that is encompassing our society. I have included two short films to teach you about the horrors of pornography and how to spot a pervert (Hint: Are they over 35 and ask if you have a MySpace account?).

Perversion for Profit


How To Spot A Pervert

The Weekend Is Coming

Since the weekend is coming I thought I would offer you some helpful advice on the best ways to handle your self. Here are two short film strips by the fine folks at Coronal Instructional Films telling you how to throw a party and date.

What To Do On A Date


What Makes A Good Party

Posters From Beyond the Iron Curtain

Admittedly, this owes a good deal to two posts I saw at BoingBoing, a wonderful website, which offers me the overwhelming temptation to repost all the good stuff they put up. I will try to reist that temptation as long as you promise to diligently read BoingBoing. Deal?

A Soviet Poster a Day


This comes from a wonderful blog that has vowed to post a new Soviet poster every day, complete with background information and relevant history. Rad? Yes. This will confirm the sneaking suspicion of every college dorm room wall that Soviet propaganda never goes out of style.

A Soviet Poster A Day

Polish Movie Posters


These sites illustrate what I hope will become an overwhelming new trend in dorm room style: Polish movie posters. I don't know how this happened, but somehow, Polish poster artists developed a tradition of really great poster design thats stunning for even the most banal, mundane films. I've got a few links of sites you could look at for this with galleries, history, and purchasing information, you little consumer, you.

A Grayspace Poster Gallery
CinemaPoster
Polish Poster

Luis Buñuel

I spent a lot of today working on a paper on surrealist film. So, in honor, two of the finest works of Luis Buñuel. First, the beloved short film, then the equally beloved feature length masterpiece.

Un Chien Andalou


L'Âge d'or
Forgive the weird intro.

The Go! Team

It's hard for me to resist a band whose aesthetic consists of manic cheerleader chants, old action movie soundtracks, and loud distorted guitars. I love all of these things and I can't help but admire the Go! Team for combining these. Here are two videos from off the new album, and it looks like an unofficial video that someone made using one of my favorite songs off their old album. I enjoy all three.

Doing It Right


Grip Like A Vice


Junior Kickstart

Zach Galifianakis

Zach Galifianakis is a very funny comedian from North Carolina. You know him as the one dude with the beard in the thing. Usually these things are television shows.. He is also in other things. Here are some of those other things.

Can't Tell Me Nothing
Zach lip-synchs to Kanye. What he is currently most known for. Shot on location in beautiful Allegheny County!


Not About Love
Zach lip-synchs to Fiona. Probably inspired the Kanye piece.


Faking an orgasm
What it sounds like.


On the Ellen Show
Yeah, I always thought the dancing thing was weird too.


Comedians of Comedy: Physical Comedy
Zach toured with other funny comedians. They made videos together.


Stand-up at Cat's Cradle
Hometown show. The chorus is actually a local improv group with folks I know.
In a separate clip of the same show, you can look for if you haven't had your fill of Zach, he calls a nursing student "young, dumb, and full of cum."

Panorama Ephemera

This 2004 film was created by Rick Prelinger of the excellent Prelinger collection. This is a massive archive of a wide variety of different types of film. This film has been made available for public use. Rick him self shows how this can be done in this feature length series of vignettes taken from other sources,that highlights just how surreal and funny America was and is. The film is hosted at the Internet Archive (archive.org) along with a huge sampling of the good stuff in the Prelinger collection.

Panorama Ephemera

Jesus Franco Trailers and Oasis of the Zombies

Jesus Franco has made over 200 movies. These two hundred movies cover the full range of human expression: From lesbian vampires to nunsploitation to Nazisploitian, Franco has done it all. Here are the trailers from a few of his fine works as well as the complete cut of Oasis of the Zombies.

Vampyros Lesbos
I first learned of Jesus Franco through the ultra-rad soundtrack to this film. Through the power of Netflix, I finally watched the movie. I can confidently say that you are probably better off watching the trailer and listening to the soundtrack.


Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS
A fragment from what I can only imagine is an amazing trailer to a horribly offensive movie.


Justine
An adaptation of the Marquis de Sade's infamous work with legendary actor Klaus Kinski.


Oasis of the Zombies
The full movie. How can this fail?

Russ Meyer Trailers

Russ Meyer is a great American director and don't let anyone tell you differently. In ten days it will be the third anniversary of his unfortunate death. His tombstone at Stockton Rural Cemetery bears this inscription:

RUSS MEYER
"King of The Nudies"
"I Was Glad to Do It"
FILM PRODUCER AND DIRECTOR
MARCH 21, 1922
SEPT. 18, 2004

Here are the trailers to some of his sexploitation classics.

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
This is a special trailer in its "behind the scenes" feel but it notably includes plenty of footage of the man at work.


Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (Original Version)
Delightfully manic.


Mudhoney
Shamelessly rough.


Common-Law Cabin
The name says it all?


Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!
The work of a genius.

Sofia Coppola

Sofia Coppola is one of my favorite contemporary directors. She has a wonderful subtlety and eye for particularly clever moments. Her career as an actress, however, is somewhat less than stellar. The Godfather III is perhaps the most glaring example of this. On the other hand she is pretty brilliant as an actress in a couple music videos.

Electrobank
Chemical Brothers song, directed by her then-spouse Spike Jonze.


Mildred Pierce
In 1990, Sofia Coppola takes on the Joan Crawford role for a Sonic Youth music video.


I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself
Sofia Coppola directs Kate Moss pole dancing to the White Stripes. This is like a fantasy come true.


Lick The Star
As a bonus, here is (in two parts) Sofia Coppola's directorial debut. In this movie you can see the seeds of the ideas for a large portion of Sofia's first feature, The Virgin Suicides.

Preferred Cranky Old Man For President

There is a stupid fad that is circulating these days. That fad is Ron Paul.

Ron Paul is a very conservative Republican, yet otherwise sensible young people, even liberals, think that he is the best man to lead the country. "But, he's a libertarian! He's anti-government and pro-freedom!"

I ask you to consider a few of his positions.

1. Ron Paul is a an Ayn Rand superstar. That is to say a monster. He believes that corporations ought to have more freedom to do whatever they want and ordinary people have no right to stand in their way. Remember the Gilded Age? When ordinary people worked ridiculously long hours for ridiculously low wages in hazardous conditions? Ron Paul wants to take us back to that wonderful age of limited social mobility and the virtual enslavement of everyone in America to the interests of robber barons and corrupt tycoons. HMOs? More of them! Telecom corporations? Less oversight! Education? None for poor people!

2. Ron Paul wants freedom for everyone... as long as that freedom doesn't extend to your uterus. He is pro-life.

3. He supports drilling the shit out of Alaska for it's oil and fucking each and every polar bear in the ass just to prove his point.

4. His stance on immigration: refuse amnesty, defund social services for EVERYONE in the country, and build a big-ass wall. Xenophobia never tasted so good.

5. He supports the gold fucking standard. I'm absolutely serious.

I'm sympathetic to the idea of electing a crusty old man who's sick of the government telling you who you can have sex with, what you can smoke, and who you have to kill to defend freedom against terror. Ron Paul though is just an arch-conservative offering us some Warren G. Harding shit and saying it's an improvement. Who's your man then?

Mike Gravel. Look him up. He's got all the good things that Ron Paul offers, plus he's an honest-to-god liberal who has no intention of screwing the poor of this country as spectacularly as Ron Paul has planned. Take your time, Google, whatever. Trust me on this. Or, if you don't, allow me to refer you to his brilliant campaign ads. They are quite possibly the best ads in political history.

Rock


Fire


Hilary Soprano
This is actually a Hilary Clinton ad. It's kind of wooden, but the concept behind it is bold and clever. It's a take-off on the last episode of Sopranos and pretty smart. It takes balls to deliberately compare yourself to a murderous mob boss in such an important campaign just to get off an inside-joke laugh. If she was this clever and bold about any of the actual issues she might win some real votes.

Mighty Warriors, Warlocks, and Cats

Jason Forrest is far and away one of my favorite musicians. I can't get enough of those cheeky, often abrasive beats. The videos that have been made to accompany the singles has been pretty good as well. Both have strange fantasy undercurrents and the breakcore mashup show that Jason Forrest used to host was called Advanced D&D.

Coincidence?!?!

War Photographer
This is the more famous video. The song itself is pretty rad and I daresay it makes Blood, Sweat, and Tears sound cool.


Steppin' Off
This video is simply genius in its details and style.


About Fun
Not Jason Forrest, but rather Psapp. The video is, however, pretty adorably wonderful, despite no obvious connection to Dungeons and Dragons. The song is catchy too. Only recently did I learn that Psapp did the theme song for Grey's Anatomy. Go figure.

Are You Reading This?

I know it's only been a few days, but I just wanted to see if this site is actually being viewed by those I know. Also, if so, who? The site's been getting a surprising amount of traffic already, and I am just curious who is reading.

So here's what I want you to do. Leave a comment with some piece of info letting me know who you are (your name for example), assuming you are a friend or acquaintance. Also, if you wouldn't mind, tell me what you thought was particularly interesting or what you would want to see more of. If the open forum of the internet makes you paranoid, then send me a message on facebook or an email or a text.

Clearly I'm mostly making a repository of interesting video out of my own interests, but I'm interested into what you are thinking too. The fun part about the Internet is interactivity. So interact, please.

The Roots Vol. 2

Speaking of involuntary plagiarism and secret influences of the student film I made in high school, "Lucidity," somehow, I managed to rip off a classic German Expressionist film which I had never seen before.

The twist ending of "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" is basically the same as the twist ending of our film. This is also the one contribution I made to the plot of the film. I thought it was a useful frame that made sense of the story and also offered a sense of closure. The ending of Dr. Caligari was similarly tacked on to the original film at the insistence of the studio, completely changing the message of the film. They too thought it was a useful frame, but most critics agree it compromised the piece. Oops. Did I ruin "Lucidity" by ripping off films that ripped off this film?

The world may never know. But, anyway, thanks to the magic of the public domain, here is the entirety of "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari." There are other cuts that are about 20 minutes shorter, but I have erred on the side of caution by picking the fullest cut I could find, and even then it's only slightly longer than an hour. I find it hard to watch and can't really imagine it being scary, but the distorted mise-en-scene is pretty rad, and it has been a pretty damn influential film.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

Touch Of Evil

My girlfriend is involved in media production and film studies and today she mentioned the Orson Welles movie, "Touch of Evil." Whether or not this is a great movie is certainly open to interpretation, but it has some brilliant moments and compelling sequence shots (notably, the opening shot). The real treasure that I wanted to share here though was an old trailer for the film.

Touch of Evil Trailer
Kitschy and brilliant. This trailer is a masterpiece of film noir trailers.


Touch of Evil Opening
This includes the famous car bomb opening sequence, which is a real triumph of the sequence shot and sound design in particular.



Children of Men Sequence Shot
Children of Men was possibly my favorite film of last year. The film includes several stunning sequence shots (which is why I mention it here). This one in particular demonstrates why I think it's a sin that this film didn't win the Oscar for Best Cinematography.

The Roots

In high school I helped to make a film that was called "Lucidity." It was a largely incomprehensible symbolic and psychological film with lots of silence and bizarre dread. I didn't write it, but its influences seemed clear: Decades and decades of the tradition of student art film. Thanks to years and hordes of well-meaning but overly-ambitious students, there had evolved a distinct genre of pretentious short film. Anyway, a couple of months ago I finally got around to watching one of the landmarks of American avant-garde film. I was stunned. I think I can safely assume that the authors of our movie had never seen Maya Deren's "Meshes of the Afternoon" but its influence had somehow trickled through the years of tradition and recrystallized in "Lucidity."

However, "Lucidity" was not a very good film. "Meshes of the Afternoon" is rad as hell and you can watch it below. Sadly (or maybe not), "Lucidity" was only burned to a small handful of DVDs, which I suspect were promptly lost, depriving you of the comparison. Sorry. I think.

Meshes of the Afternoon

Weeds

Weeds is one of the funniest shows on television. It's on Monday at 10 pm on Showtime, not that anyone has Showtime. Anyway, I would encourage you to watch it. The basic plot of the show is that a suburban mother, played by Mary-Louise Parker, who turns to selling weed to support her sons and her own upper middle class lifestyle. It's a funny, vicious, and not preachy about anything. Here are some related clips.

Wisdom of Our Elders
The accompanying blurb for this on the Showtime YouTube page explains this perfectly: "Uncle Andy teaches Shane how to pleasure himself without disrupting the plumbing."


Weeds Theme Song
Elvis Costello sings a cover of the Malvina Reynolds original. After the first season, a different artist plays the theme for each episode.


Mary Louise Parker on the West Wing
She played Amy, a feminist lobbyist who is occasionally romantically involved with Josh. For a long time I had a huge crush on this character.

My Favorite Ad Campaign

These are so simple, but so brilliant. I don't think it's typically acceptable advertising practice to threaten your customers, but here it's so genius. Wonderfully sinister. I like the deer best. I think it's the accent.

Deer


Guinea Pig


Butterfly

Esquivaliant!

Esquivaliance is the heroic shirking of one's official responsibilities. Esquivaliant is the adjective form, though both forms derive from the word, esquivalience, which is, to those with absolutely no imagination, not strictly a real word. I once wrote about it's origins here.

That was on my old blog. It was a complicated affair where I actually tried to generate original content. The end result is that I wrote a lot about the rise and fall of various nascent internet phenomena using lots of graphs as well as lot of linguistics oriented analyses of the word "fuck." I was pretty happy with it, and I'm delighted at the heavy traffic it still gets.

This, however, is not The Definitive Truth.

This site will mostly consist of embedded video and links to other websites. Occasionally, I may interject commentary and useful background info, but this I think, will be more useful to people. Allow me to demonstrate.

Trailer for Master Killer
It shouldn't take you long to figure out who this influenced.


Ballet mechanique - Fernand Leger
Really beautiful and sad. From 1924!


Upright Citizens Brigade: Ass Pennies
From the unfairly canceled show. It speaks for itself.

From Crackle: ass pennies