temptorus II

a toroidal vortex.

a vortex ring.

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Hair Club for Men

Finally remembered to post the fifth and final musical détournement in my series on gender construction and socialization through the media.



Please support The Presets and Van She by purchasing this track through iTunes:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/are-you-one-van-she-tech-n.y.c./id200303697?i=200303719

This is my fifth musical détournement involving gender and the media, and the final in this series. This one is an investigation of the ties between hair and male virility, from the classical and biblical periods to today. It is a critique of consumer culture's attempts to play upon male insecurities and sell imagined masculinity.

The images and sounds in this video are the properties of the copyright holders. I mean in no way to infringe on their rights. The content is used solely for the purposes of criticism.

because they have always already occurred

the present is always already a state of anticipation.

"so, how is it that things happen? aren't we always just waiting for the--"

because they have always already occurred.

temptorus

zeno,

st. augustine,

bergson.

the present is a cavitation bubble.

it makes real and perceptible, anticipation,

in the manner that water moves out of the way ahead of something Other moving through its space.

http://eswt.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/cavitation.gif

antici

Teeth

It's not a film parody. It's a parody of a reading of film... the dominant, feminist psychoanalytical reading of horror films, steeped in good old fashioned Freudian castration anxiety. It's the Sarlacc pit from whence issues the laugh of Cixous. Zero point, where the pleasure principle meets the death drive.

I learned about this film from a former student, Mark Borison, who recognized the discussion we were having in my Horror Film course about vagina dentatae.

The Conjuring sure to possess audiences

Lorraine (Vera Farmiga) uses a music box to make one of The Conjuring's many spirits materialize.

Director James Wan, following the international box office success of 2011’s supremely creepy Insidious, returns with the well-constructed haunted house film, The Conjuring. While Wan could have built a successful horror career around the “gore-porn” elements of his earlier Saw (2004), he has instead consistently frightened audiences with suspenseful and unsettling situations. The Conjuring adds another level of terror to Wan’s proven directorial skills with a script based on events from the lives and case files of real-life demonologist couple, Ed and Lorraine Warren.

The Warrens are perhaps best known for their investigation of the supernatural events recounted in the book and film versions of The Amityville Horror, and The Conjuring makes several overt nods to the classic 1979 film version of the incident. Rather than the overt references, though, it is the faithful recreation of the same small-town, New England culture of the early 1970s in The Conjuring that most reflects Amityville. Wan treats the setting with just enough camp to bring grins to reminiscent older audience members, but not so much that the film lapses into parody or loses its terrifying momentum. The result is a smart, scary, and self-aware movie that hits a breathless pace midway in and does not let up until the final credits roll.

The Conjuring is not without its missteps, including a couple of comedic lines of dialogue that, rather than complement the horror, seem out of place. Thankfully, none of those jokes are put in the mouth of Ron Livingston, who, despite stints in several dramatic television series, always carries with him the comedic spectre of Office Space. His understated performance and shaggy-haired look in this film, though, make him nearly unrecognizable and keep his Roger subdued. Of the four principle actors, however, he is the least noteworthy.

Instead, it is Lili Taylor’s performance as his wife, Carolyn, that ultimately shines. For much of the film she, too, is subdued, with most of the early action involving the five young daughters of the family. At the climactic moment of the film, however, her shift in demeanor is captivating. The character of a woman sharing a supernatural bond with demonic, domestic forces is a comfortable role for Taylor, having starred in the 1999 remake of the haunted house classic, The Haunting.

Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, who quite capably embody the Warrens, are no strangers to horror fans, either. Wilson also stars in the aforementioned Insidious and Farmiga is fresh off a successful stint as Norman Bates’ mother, Norma, in A&E’s discomfiting series, Bates Motel. The actors move convincingly and seamlessly between scenes in which they are required to perform as academics, as loving parents, and as stalwart combatants against the forces of hell.

If classic drive-in horror is your milieu, do yourself a favor and see The Conjuring. If you prefer the 2005 remake of The Amityville Horror to the original, hold out for another Saw installment.

Pacific Rim more of the spectacular same, only different

With Pacific Rim, Writer-director Guillermo del Toro and co-writer Travis Beacham have created a definitive summer blockbuster movie that paints the giant cinemaplex canvas with 2 hours and 11 minutes of heart-pounding spectacle. The action is so densely packed that there is an entire feature film’s worth of story before the opening title appears. It is the kind of movie that begs to be seen obscenely large and heard outrageously loud. Every richly constructed detail, in all its realistically rendered hi-definition glory commands our attention in creating a world like none we’ve ever seen. And, yet, in a way, we’ve seen it all before.

That is because Pacific Rim seems manufactured to provide audiences with exactly what they want. Its success is easily predictable because it is everything that recent box office figures have shown audiences want, and more.  It has the immersive CG environment of Avatar, along with its story device of action carried out by human-operated surrogates. It shares the fanciful martial arts combat numbers of The Last Airbender or Hero.  It involves levels of meta-narrative, stories within stories, and linked minds and memories like Inception before it. Images of full-scale, urban apocalypse scroll past like those we’ve seen in 2012 and the Dark Knight films.

The movie borrows heavily from older films, as well. The Hong Kong of Pacific Rim very much resembles the Los Angeles of Blade Runner.  Flashback scenes of a character in her youth, wandering alone in the ruins of a city devasted by kaiju, attempt to evoke a similar pathos as that created by the girl in the red coat in Schindler’s List. An unending laundry-list of allusions and resemblances shape the movie:

• the melodramatic flight camaraderie of Top Gun (although calculatedly avoiding the homoeroticism of that earlier film by primarily pairing pilots in familial relationships-- brothers and father/son teams-- but sharing that film's unbelievably forced romantic storyline)
• the us vs. them, sci-fi military machismo of Aliens and Starship Troopers
• the hostile alien colonization scenario of Prometheus
• the behemoth, anthropomorphic battle machines of the Power Rangers and Transformers

Of course, the basic concept of the kaiju (“strange  beast”) is indebted to Godzilla and other classic oversized, city-stomping monster movies of the 1950s and 1960s. While del Toro has explicitly stated that he did not want the creature designs to reference any familiar screen monsters, comparisons with the critters of Cloverfield are inevitable.

The film’s harvesting of visual and narrative elements from already-proven sources isn’t limited to the big screen, either. Pacific Rim wields the TV-MA star power of Sons of Anarchy by appropriating its handsome star, Charlie Hunnam, and its less-than-handsome star, Ron Perlman. It takes advantage of the ridiculous, but charming, comic sensibilities of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s Charlie Day. News media and historical images shape the visual quality of the film, too. At times, the rolling cloud wave of debris moving through the streets, past skyscrapers, looks as if it might be archive coverage of September 11, with the remnants of the city resembling post-atomized Hiroshima.

Pacific Rim is a mosaic made up mostly of shards of previous films, of recognizable elements, both visual and narrative. Yet, the unique conglomeration, pacing, and arrangement of these elements form a constellation like nothing we’ve seen on screen before. What audiences are presented with is an uncanny movie, in a very literal sense; as the story unfolds, it looks and sounds comfortably familiar, and yet somehow strangely different. The result is that we are kept interested, awaiting the next recognizable scene, perhaps in spite of ourselves.

Pacific Rim is altogether entertaining, never really promising to be more than it is—an enjoyable, highly-marketable action film, positioned respectfully in a lineage of similarly enjoyable, highly-marketable action films. It is likely this summer’s definitive blockbuster and it is just what we’ve asked for in terms of saccharine cinematic dessert. If we’re ultimately unhappy with the taste, we have only ourselves to blame for ordering seconds.

Fourth musical détournement on gender and media

Please support Peaches by purchasing this track through iTunes: 
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/bur...

This is my fourth musical détournement involving gender and the media. This one is a critique of television's active construction of female-female conflict as entertainment. Television, as a patriarchal apparatus, has historically taught women to fight one another in an attempt to keep them from realizing the potential of their collusion.

It's Dynasty catfights.

The images and sounds in this video are the properties of the copyright holders. I mean in no way to infringe on their rights. The content is used solely for the purposes of criticism.

More Short Films from Graduating UCBA eMedia Students

Inspired by Matt Benjamin

Cross by Tony DeLotell

The Orb by Brendan Moellmann

Trapped by Steven Creech

New Zealander physicist proves gay marriage does not cause drought

NZ Parliament has just made many working on the next Hobbit film quite happy. (And not just the elves...)

Mad Rush

I am pleased to share the work of talented pianist and eMedia artist, Alex Farren, who is graduating from our program this semester. This video pairs stunning time-lapse footage and an interview at a dharma center with his musical performance of a piece Philip Glass composed for the Dalai Lama. It's like a mini-Koyaanisqatsi, only beter.

Like a Riot

This is Betty Wut's first music compilation video constructed from found footage. It includes music from Moonbootica, The Rapture, and Battles.

That's a Wrap

That's a Wrap is a talkshow about the movie industry, produced by students in the Multi-Camera Video Production course at the University of Cincinnati, Blue Ash College.

Watch me look slightly insane and talk lots of smack about movies with host Kees Henskens (right) and Aaron Bates, Area Manager of Danbarry Cinemas (left).

Both episodes can be watched on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdaFA7ARxut_wz9it9RgBQXG220YmOXr8

Moscow in the Spring

Please check out the Bandcamp page for this fun, noir audio drama created by Zachary George, a talented student in our department. On this page, you can hear an audio spot for it, as well as the entire first episode.

http://detectivefrankpierce.bandcamp.com/

"Jon-Erik Hexum: A Brief Tale in Three Parts"

I. Patrick

I’m trying to jerk off to her Duran Duran poster, but there’s just so much goddamned make-up and hairspray on those guys. I mean, I may as well be trying to beat off to the airbrushed cover of one of the old man’s Oui magazines that he keeps tucked away in the rafters of the garage. I found them while snooping around at age seven and became disinterested just as quickly when I discovered them to suffer from severe dick deficiency. Every once in a while, though, I still climb up there and peek in on them, like you would your grandmother laying comatose in a nursing home, just to make sure she’s still there. You know, to see if there have been any new developments. There haven’t. Maybe he’s forgotten that those musty old sluts are up there. I’m sure he has forgotten about Gran.

God, I’m distracted. I wish Kimberly would forget that I’m here.

She’s been in the bathroom for a good twenty minutes now, I can only assume wrestling with a slippery diaphragm or something. My eyes close and a vision of her in the bathroom crystallizes before me, one newly-shaven leg planted up on the sink like she’s airing out something that she left in the rain overnight. The spermicidal jellyfish slips out of her fingers onto the dirty tiled floor. She picks it up, covered in newly-trimmed pubes, and shimmies it in.

This certainly isn’t helping, so I shove that little horror movie vignette out of my head and I pull more fervently. Concentrate. David. Oh, yeah. Lee. That’s it. Roth. Now I’m firming up in my hand. Concentrate.

“Boy, you sure are excited.”

I flinch, my eyes springing open like a window shade in a Saturday morning cartoon. Adjusting to the light coming into the room from the open bathroom door, I can’t really see because of the sparkles swimming in my vision from clenching my eyes. A blurry, nude silhouette is framed in orange fluorescent light. Jon-Erik Hexum.

“What did you say?”

Even in silhouette, she looks nothing like him. But I’m desperate now.

“Did you just say Jon-Erik Hexum?” She laughs and jumps on the bed next to me.

Did I? Out loud? She pushes my hand out of the way and takes hold of my again-limp hog. I gasp, more shock than pleasure.

I squint and turn back to Duran Duran. They’re better lit now as the bathroom light splashes them like a stage spotlight. They still look like women. Like middle-aged women in a hair salon style book. Even the drummer, and he’s the only one remotely resembling a dude on one of their best days.

God, she’s slinging it around like she’s trying to twirl a drumstick over her head.

I manage to bleat out “I said, ‘Can we have some music?’” and feel the release of pressure as she unhands me. Suddenly, she’s in the floor behind me, recklessly shuffling through LP’s. A pause.

“Duran Duran?”

“WHAT? NO! God no!”

“But Steve said you loved them,” a tiny, disappointed, girlish whine at the displeasure of this bit of possible misinformation from her older brother. 

His reaction, when I told him this lie after practice, was: “So does my sister, Kimberly. Come out with Danielle and me tomorrow night and I’ll bring her.”

It’s obviously not why I told Steve that I was into them, and now I am not so sure I am. All-male band, somewhat effeminate, with full wet lips, who ask plaintively, “Is there something I should know?” Yes, Steve. There is. You should know that I’m into cock. And if the way things are going so far with your sister, Kimberly, are any indication, I am still sure of that.

Even though he didn’t get the fuck-me message I was shining brighter than the bat-signal, it resulted in a night out with him, away from school, and I was not gonna pass it up. Never mind that they were with us the whole time—his girlfriend, Danielle, and sister, Kimberly. As I survey the glossy lithograph of the band, straining against the yellowed cellophane tape affixing it to the pink bedroom wall, it strikes me that his girlfriend bears an uncanny resemblance to the guitarist.

Jesus, I just can’t look at these guys anymore. So I turn my head to look at sister, Kimberly. “Not Kim. Never Kim.” I watch her naked 13-year-old-boy body squatting over a pile of LPs. There is nothing sexy about it. I prop my head up on my arm and look closer, inspect, really, her mole-speckled ass. I glimpse her reflection in the full-length mirror on the wall in front of her and my attention is drawn to the roast-beef-sandwich-of-a-thing hovering over her records… like it’s surveying them, trying to decide for her.

I begin to superimpose on it diagrams from freshman-year health class that I had committed to memory for multiple choice exams. Where in all those folds of skin do you put your penis? I cross-reference these with half-imagined glimpses of the Oui photo spreads my father had at some point used to pleasure himself. Is that the clitoris?

I had better remember fast. That thing looks like it’s about to make its mind up on a music selection and then it’s going to turn its rapturous attention toward me. I should just do it. And do it right.I bet the walls of her vagina are tight, constrictive. I may even bring her to orgasm. Maybe even make her ejaculate.

Nope. That kind of talk is too clinical, academic. It’s not working, though my free hand is. Furiously. At my dick trying to bring it back to life.

What made Steve think that I would be a good match for her? It couldn’t have just been the poppy, British New Romantic music. My eyes clench again. Even tighter this time.

Sting.

In Dune.

She’s grown impatient with her record collection, I hear with a harrumph, followed by her walking across the room and flipping on the FM receiver. static. The Pretenders. static. Fabulous Thunde—static. The Police. Oh God. Leave it here. She does. And I’m firming up again.

I open my eyes to find her bald cunt staring me right in the face, I mean right at eye level at the edge of her bed. Her clit, at least I think that’s what it is, points at me accusingly, as if to say, “I know what you are.”

How did I end up here, peering into her womb?

I’m pretty sure I smell gin. And I am nowhere near her breath.

A terrifying thought thrusts its way into my flaccid mind: What if I miss and it goes in her urethra? Is that even possible? It can’t be good. I can’t do this. There’s just nothing to work with down there.

My brain’s performing even more poorly than my hog, but I manage to ask “Got any grass?”

“Grass?” she repeats, drawing the word out.

“You know, marijuana.”

“I know what you mean. Just who calls it that? Are you from the sixties?” She’s clearly impatient now. Her tone is surprising, considering just how much she seems to want to fuck my brains out, “No. Steve usually does, but I don’t think he’s coming back from Danielle’s…”

“Where’s he keep it?”

“His closet. But he might have taken...”

“Let’s check,” I’m already digging around in her A-ha sheets to find my briefs.

“He doesn’t like me being in his room-- anyone in his room. And he’s gonna be pissed if we smoke up his pot.”

“You just said he won’t be back,” there’s no talking me out of it. Now, I have to be in his room… his bed… his underwear drawer. I’ve pulled my own underclothes on and throw Kimberly my white, button-down shirt, “Here.” Cover up that accusatory, gin-soaked, music-loving pile of medium-rare roast beef.

But now, even though it’s hidden behind my one good shirt, I still can’t get the image of it out of my head.

“Awwww,” she’s admiring herself in the mirror, stroking the collar of my shirt at her neck and fingering the embroidered monogram.

I am up and at her bedroom door, “Where’s his room?”

The Unknown

The Unknown from Lucas Ankney on Vimeo.

Please enjoy The Unknown, a visually-arresting, meditative journey by graduating student, Lucas Ankney. His work is in the vein of Jodorowsky, Derek Jarman, and Matthew Barney.

Cocaine Lane

Cocaine Lane from Sam Laudner on Vimeo.

It's nearly Spring and that means it's student film season around these parts. I am excited to share with you the work of Sam Laudner, a student graduating from our program this semester. His neo-noir, Cocaine Lane, is stunning.

My Coulrophobia video

That was my contribution to the Coulrophobia Détournement Double project orchestrated by Betty Wut and myself. It is no way meant to be a competition, but instead complementary visual explorations on the same theme. The guidelines on the project are at:

http://matchcut.blogspot.com/2012/11/current-project-coulrophobia.html

It's taken me long enough to complete. And not a moment too soon-- the original coulrophobia video, clips of which were required in our videos, has been yanked from YouTube. Also, I have exactly one day left on my Adobe Premiere trial. Freddy has volunteered to download another trial for me under his account, so I hope to finish the three other video projects I've started.

Betty Wut's Coulrophobia video

Betty Wut completed her contribution to the Coulrophobia Détournement Double video project some time ago. I only just convinced her to allow me to upload it to YouTube. I am still working on mine since I lost the original progress I had made in a VideoPad crash. I've been very insistent on using free/open-source video editing software, but I've broken down and used Adobe Premiere. I had to get the Airbrushed project out of my system before moving on, so I cut my teeth on the software for that.

Above is her compilation music video Yes...NO! constructed from found footage on YouTube. Enjoy!