Ubuweb has posted an odd short film from Genesis P-Orridge called “Weird Woman (State 1).” The film is simply a story from what I think is a cloaked P-Orridge (looking kind of creepy). The story involves a kid severing the legs of a dog and other horrible acts.
P-Orridge on the film:
Well, you can probably tell from the outfit we’re wearing that Lady Jay designed the outift. She styled it. So Weird Woman was Lady Jay’s creation. Gosh, in 1969 we wrote this book called Missus Asquith and it was about a paranoid schizophrenic landlady who ran a bed and breakfast and who also had one person staying in her house whose name was Ivan Bitovovich. But Ivan and Bitovovich didn’t realize that they were the same person. So Bitovovich was having an affair with Missus Asquith, but Ivan was jealous and also a vouyeur of pete and thumb. And so Ivan would watch Bitovovich and Missus Asquith have sex, not realizing it was him. Are you with me so far? And so in this strange, twisted, warped world, we started to do it like it was a radio play—me and Lady Jay. So we would sorta go, ‘It’s peas, Missus Asquith, it’s peas!’ And then Bitovovich had this paranoid idea that when he saw peas on a plate they were really pea crabs and if you didn’t look carefully they would suddenly grow legs and attack you. So Weird Woman grew out of Missus Asquith—sort of an amalgam of paranoia and sort of warped perceptions. And then Jay decided that she would wear these really horrible clothes and this black wig.
The line-ups for the Toronto International Film Festival and the Venice International Film Festival have been announced and there is a huge log of interesting directors who are going to be doing premieres at these festivals. Toronto is featuring many of the most talked about films from Cannes that haven’t been screened in North America yet, like Another Year, Biutiful, and You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger. It also has world premieres from directors Michael Winterbottom, James Cameron Mitchell, Robert Redford, Mike Mills, Philip Seymore Hoffman, and many others. The full line-up is after the break.
A post over at These Old Colors has reminded of how beautiful cinematographer Roger Deakins (No Country for Old Men, Shawshank Redemption, among many other brilliant films) photographs are. There is a wonderful sense of composition in his pictures, not just the structure as a square (as you can see in the photo with the jumping animal (a cat I think…) but in terms of the photo as an object with layers, and depth, and perception of its own. There are a few of his photos below, and you can see more at his site, RogerDeakins.com.
The post pulls a great quote from an interview I did with Deakins a couple of years back:
All I’ve ever wanted to do is take stills of people, or take documentaries about people, and try to express to an audience how somebody lives next door. You know what I mean? Just how similar we all are as individuals.
The 2010 Booker longlist has been announced and it features a few surprises, a few books that aren’t publicly released yet, and a few stand-bys. We’ve got links to the books as well as to excerpts from the novels themselves (courtesy of The Millions).
- Parrot and Olivier in America
by Peter Carey (excerpt)
- Room
by Emma Donoghue (excerpt)
- The Betrayal
by Helen Dunmore (excerpt)
- In a Strange Room
by Damon Galgut (excerpt)
- The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson
- The Long Song
by Andrea Levy (excerpt)
- C
by Tom McCarthy
- The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
by David Mitchell (excerpt)
- February
by Lisa Moore (excerpt)
- Skippy Dies
by Paul Murray (excerpt)
- Trespass
by Rose Tremain (excerpt [scroll down])
- The Slap
by Christos Tsiolkas (excerpt)
- Stars in the Bright Sky
by Alan Warner
via InDigest
via The Rumpus
Britain’s The Pop Group have announced plans to reunite this fall. The legendary post-punkers who synthesized punk, rock, jazz, and dub are doing to be doing four dates in the fall between London and Italy. The press release from All Tomorrow’s Parties, who is putting on the London shows, makes it sound as though there is far more than these four shows in the band’s future mentioning that they have had a lot of offers to headline festivals in 2011. Singer Mark Stewart also mentioned in an interview with the AV Club in Mat that the band was getting back together to record new material.
The reunion will feature Stewart,Gareth Sager, and Bruce Smith (also of Public Image LTD.) who are all original members, and then Dan Catsis who replaced their original bassist Simon Underwood for their sophomore album For How Much Longer Do We Tolerate Mass Murder? The press release makes it sound as though this will not be a short reunion but a true reunion with the band planning “to play a small amount of club dates to ‘blow the dust off the old songs and pick up where [they] left off.” They also said, “There was a lot left undone,….we were so young and volatile….Let’s face it, things are probably even MORE fucked now than they were in the early 80’s…..and WE are even more fucked off!” Sounds like lots of touring and recording to me. Tour dates and videos after the break.
Liars can’t seem to do any wrong right now. Their Daytrotter session last week was fantastic. Particularly you should be listening to their rendition of “Scissor” in that session. Beautiful a cappella intro and that haunting organ filling in like liturgical music in the background before they bring the rock. (Really, every track on this session is great – “Scarecrows on a Killer Slant” is a track that cannot be fought.)
Victory Rose posted lots on non-Sigur Ros related content this week, the crown jewel being Spiritualized’s acoustic set from January 7th at Inspired by Iceland. Every moment of this set is haunting and beautiful. It’s the kind of set that sticks with you as changing your perception of a band (unless you’ve heard them acoustic before). The set strips a lot of their songs to their bones and reveals that without pedals and electronics J. Spaceman is just a damn good songwriter.
Southern Shelter captured a recent Elf Power set at the Caledonia where the Elephant Six collective members played a lot of tracks from their forthcoming self-titled album to be released on September 14th through Orange Twin. Lots of promise for their new album.
Iceland’s Amina (a wonderful group that is probably most famous for having toured frequently with Sigur Ros and serving as Sigur Ros’ string quartet) performed at the same Inspired by Iceland show as Spiritualized. The set is just three tracks, but, as usual, it’s an eerie performance with assorted odd percussion, electronics, bells, and that hovering saw that they play on almost all their songs.
NYC Taper captured a few good set this past week including sets from Fol Chen, Deer Tick, and Memory Tapes.
Obligatory Daytrotter mentions: (quite a few solid sessions this week) Sonny & the Sunsets, Rogue Wave, Christina Courtin, and The War on Drugs.