Tag: film

deliciousness with The Foley Room

FUTURESHORTS presents Charles De Mayer’s film of Amon Tobin’s Esther’s.

Amon Tobin’s album, The Foley Room, is an entirely other beast from other records. Not only is it flat out incredible to listen to, every single sound on the album is a home-made sample. According to the Ninja Tune website, “Amon and a team of assistants headed out into the streets with high sensitivity microphones and recorded found sounds from tigers roaring to cats eating rats, neighbours singing in the bath to ants eating grass”. He also contacted the Kronos Quartet to make odd sounds for him. One of my favourite twists is that the rough, ripping motorcycle, saw-like purring sound that underlies Ether’s, the track featured in the video above, is actually the sound of a honeybee’s wings.

There is no such thing, in my world, as over-playing The Foley Room.

Also, if you’re not familiar with FUTURE SHORTS, you owe it to yourself to thoroughly explore their channel, it’s possibly one of the most satisfying places to wander on the web. A film distribution label specializing in globally sourced films of exquisite creativity and quality, “Future Shorts is the definitive short film experience.”

Jeanet & Caro’s first film, The Bunker of the Last Gunshots, now available to watch on-line!

Via Twitchfilm:

Before The City of Lost Children, before Delicatessen, long before Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro would become international darlings, all the way back in 1981, the duo would make their live action directorial debut with The Bunker of the Last Gunshots. They had already collaborated on a pair of animated shorts by this point but Bunker was their first foray into the ‘real’ world and already their distinct style was fully on display. Running at 25 minutes, the start, seemingly post-apocalyptic film has been a hard one for fans to track down but the entire thing is now online and available for viewing. Take a look below.

LE BUNKER from kapelaans.

we’re watching it tonight

I’ve been following and supporting Nina Paley‘s struggle to create, finish, and finally distribute, (in spite of November’s scary brush with music related copyright threats), her beautiful, shoe-string budget independent film, Sita Sings The Blues, ever since her incredible DIY project started to hit the web chapter by chapter back in 2006, so it gives me extreme pleasure to announce that..

the completed full length film of Sita Sings The Blues is now available on-line through Reel 13!

“Sita is a goddess separated from her beloved Lord and husband Rama. Nina is an animator whose husband moves to India, then dumps her by e-mail. Three hilarious shadow puppets narrate both ancient tragedy and modern comedy in this beautifully animated interpretation of the Indian epic Ramayana. Set to the 1920’s jazz vocals of Annette Hanshaw, Sita Sings the Blues earns its tagline as “The Greatest Break-Up Story Ever Told.””

Sita Sings the Blues trailer on YouTube.
COILHOUSE interview with Nina Paley.

come one, come all

Secret Film School presents Todd Rohal’s “Guatemalan Handshake” tonight.


“A feast for the senses… a challenge for the brain.”

Film at 7 sharp. 400 West Hastings. Arrive early as doors will be locked.

In the confusion following a massive power outage in small-town America, human doormat Donald Turnupseed (actor-musician Will Oldham, Old Joy) suddenly vanishes, setting in motion a surreal series of events affecting his hapless father, his pregnant girlfriend, a pack of wild boy scouts, a lactose-intolerant roller rink employee, an elderly woman in search of her lost poodle, and his best friend: a ten-year-old girl named Turkeylegs.

One of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film, writer-director Todd Rohal charts strange new cinematic waters with his madly innovative feature debut, The Guatemalan Handshake. Winner of Special Jury Prizes at 2006 Slamdance and Torino, Rohal’s vivacious feast for the senses “bristles with his anarchic visual language, offbeat humor, ephemeral sense of narrative, circuitous character sketches, and freewheeling sense of mirth” (Baltimore City Paper).

Corey McAbee, (Billy Nayer Show, The American Astronaut), also stars, and has sent me some anecdotes about making the film to pass on to everyone who attends.