tUnE-yArDs ~ My Country

Shabazz Palaces – Black Up

Bit late on this one. This is a fantastic video, though.

Grimes ~ Oblivion

New video for Grimes, made by Emily Kai Bock. It is full of arresting images and spontaneity and is my favourite music video for a good while.

Titled

This site is a fantastic resource, literally thousands of title screens from the history of cinema. It’s fascinating just to trawl through and has everything from Saul Bass classics like Vertigo and North By Northwest, to cult oddities like Egghead’s Robot, and The Arousers. In fact, it may be these oddities that are the most appealing, you might know what to expect from a 70s film called The Arousers but the title screen is quite baffling, conjuring up a totally other absurd film (a documentary about pigeon breeding, perhaps?) As for Egghead’s Robot, who knows?

Of course, these titles weren’t designed to be seen as still images like this, they were part of a title sequence, but I like this sites single-minded determination to showing the actual titles, even if they’re just on a black background.

As an added interest, here are the three title screens from the next films I’m showing as part of Lanternhouse’s matinee film programme. Click the image to link to details of the screenings.

Tom Conway

 

An interesting aside from I Walked with a Zombie. The male lead was played by Tom Sanders, who I recognised mainly from The Staggering Stories of Ferdinand de Bargos. This was a TV series that ran from 1989-1995. It consisted of archive film footage re-dubbed (by people like Ronni Ancona, Alistair MacGowan and Jim Broadbent) and I remember thinking it was hilarious.

Most of the storylines though were built round ‘the Falcon’ a character in a series of low rate film noir knock offs, presumably inspired by The Maltese Falcon. Tom Conway appears as the Falcon in all these films, leading to a wealth of footage for the Ferdinand de Bargos team to play with. Occasionally, it was very funny, and usually with Conway on screen.

What I didn’t know (and thank god wikipedia is back out of the dark) is that Conway’s brother is the inimitable George Sanders, star of Rebecca and All About Eve, and the original Falcon. The screen loved George more than Tom, but neither ended their days happy. Sanders committed suicide, Conway fell from the limelight and was rediscovered living in a $2 flophouse in California later in his life. He died shortly afterwards.

It is worth seeking out any film with George Sanders in it. Conway’s filmography is a bit sparser, but he was also in Cat People, another Jacques Tourneur/Val Lewton chiller. Oh, and it’s probably worth checking out Ferdinand de Bargos, though it’s not quite as hilarious as I remember.

I Walked With A Zombie

Jacques Tourneur’s I Walked with a Zombie is a minor masterpiece of psychological horror. Zombie movie aficionados may be disappointed. It is more like the film noirs of Edgar Ulmer, Joseph H. Lewis and Robert Aldrich; low rent, lacking a big star yet wonderful. This isn’t crime, so doesn’t have wisecracks. It isn’t quite horror either. It puts me in mind more of a Luis Bunuel film from his Mexican period, the impoverished nature of its production cannot hide the macabre, human glory of the narrative. If Bunuel had got hold of the central love theme here it might have been even more glorious.

Songs of 2011 Part Two

Here’s the top 10.

10. Girls – Just A Song 

It’s a bit stop-start, never seems to quite go anywhere with purpose, but one day I found myself humming this song in its entirety as though it were an old favourite from way back.

9. Grouper – I Saw A Ray 

As I’ve said before, I loved Grouper this year. Dream Loss was the less tuneful of the 2 records but in the end the one I loved most.

8. Grimes – Vanessa 

Hadn’t heard of Grimes before this year, totally fell in love with this tune. Big experimental pop at its best. Can’t wait for the new record in 2012.

7. Kurt Vile – Runner Ups 

Totally loved this Kurt Vile song, and the record. Straight up, singer songwritery stuff. Nothing experimental here, but last.fm doesn’t lie. Skip the ad, and watch a video of it whilst staring at the record cover. Best I could find.

6. Kate Bush – Misty 

A late entry into this list. Always risky, particularly when it’s a blousy 14-minute ballad about a woman making love to a snowman. Will I look back in a year and think, what the hell was I thinking? Possibly. It doesn’t matter because this is brilliant. Big Laughing Stock-era Talk Talk vibe to this too. Weird fan video though.

5. Atlas Sound – Te Amo 

Bradford Cox has discovered class. He discovered it last year with Deerhunter’s Halcyon Digest, but this is better for me. Dedicated to Trish Keenan too, a fine purveyor of pop class who went this year.

4. Panda Bear – Afterburner 

I did a list like this last year, and Alsatian Darn off Panda Bear’s record Tomboy was my number 1 track. It burrowed its way into my head and I could not get it out. According to last.fm it’s my most listened to track this year too, but it feels of 2010. Lennox released the first half of Tomboy in 2010 so the discovery this year lay in the second half. It makes the record a little disjointed to me, but Afterburner was my favourite new Panda Bear track. Rhythmic bliss.

3. Real Estate – Green Aisles 

Nothing sounded more effortless than this in 2011.

2. PJ Harvey – On Battleship Hill 

Justified hype. I’ve not really hear anyone cite this as a highlight of Let England Shake, but I could not get enough of it.

1. Gang Gang Dance – Glass Jar 

It’s everything time.

Songs of 2011

Here are my 25 favourite songs of 2011 and why. My only rule is 1 song per release.

25. David Thomas Broughton – Electricity 

For the expert chanelling of Jake Thackray.

24. The Caretaker – Cameraderie At Arm’s Length 

‘An Empty Bliss Beyond This World’ is an amazing record. I hadn’t listened to much Leyland Kirby/The Caretaker and have been rectifying this.

23. Thundercat – For Love (I Come Your Friend) 

I couldn’t really stop playing this. Turns out it’s pretty straight but gleeful version of the George Duke original.

22. Grouper – Alien Observer 

Grouper were superb this year. Both A I A albums are fantastic, this is the title track from the “pop” record.

21. Iron & Wine – Your Fake Name Is Good Enough For Me 

I kind of keep expecting Iron & Wine to put out a disappointing record, to go off the boil. They don’t. They just get better.

20. Panda Bear – The Preakness 

Effortless pop from Noah Lennox, hidden on an obscure Animal Collective cassette, hence slightly dodgy rip.

19. Battles – Ice Cream (feat. Matias Aguayo) 

Didn’t expect to like this new Battles stuff at all, was only a moderate fan at the best of times. Liked it a lot though, and nothing topped this. Slightly dodgy, hipster-ish video.

18. Tim Hecker – The Piano Drop 

This track is really a representative from Hecker’s album Ravedeath, 1972. Totally into warm, degrading noise stuff this year. See also Leyland Kirby.

17. Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks – Share The Red 

Beck produced, you can tell he’s a fan because he makes the Jicks sound more like Pavement than ever before.

16. Woods – Wouldn’t Waste 

Lifts Woods a bit above their game. It’s quite mournful and poised, slightly less ramshackle than normal.

15. Nicolas Jaar – Space Is Only Noise If You Can See 

Grab a calculator and fix yourself.

14. Deerhoof – Must Fight Current 

I listened to a lot of Arto Lindsay records this year, and this reminded me of him a lot. Kind of no-wave, spoken word bits in there. I played it a lot even though the album didn’t quite take in the same way their others have.

13. Rangers – Jane’s Well 

Mining a similar seam to Real Estate/Ducktails, but sounding more like The Durutti Column, which in this case is a very good thing.

12. Leyland Kirby – They Are All Dead, There Are No Skip At All 

Man of the year for me. A madly prolific year, releasing one LP as The Caretaker, three EPs in the Intrigue & Stuff series and one full length record. In a year when the world seemed to be collapsing, and state-funded arts cuts basically did for my job is it any wonder I found solace, wonder, dread and hope in a fiercely independent northerner/Berliner who just kept putting out amazing records.

11. Bill Callahan – Riding For The Feeling 

My tagline for Bill Callahan would be “consistently better than Bonnie Prince Billy.” It feels like he tries less hard, but does better. And all Callahan/Smog records have a track that soars above the others, this is it for me. How brilliant is this video too?

OK. That’s your lot, you can have a breather before I do the top 10.

Tundishh

I definitely overthink the content of this blog, though it might not seem like it. So in an effort to do something without much forethought I have set up a tumblr. It’s called tundishh.tumblr.com. I’ve also given myself a simple added restriction in that it will only contain material relating to British film and television. Specifically, to a kind of semi-obscure lineage of British films and TV the kind of which I’ve explored a little on this blog. I began by posting two Shelagh Delaney related films – The White Bus, and Shelagh Delaney’s Salford a BBC documentary directed by a young Ken Russell. Two days later Delaney died and the Ken Russell film was all over the internet. Here it is again.

Expect more Ken Russell and Lindsay Anderson, Andrew Kotting, Chris Petit, JG Ballard, John Smith, Sid Perou, Lynne Ramsay, Sally Potter, Derek Jarman, Patrick Keiller, Alan Clarke, David Rudkin, Cavalcanti, Margaret Tait, Peter Greenaway, Dennis Potter, Powell & Pressburger, Kevin Brownlow, Oliver Postgate, und so weiter…

I will keep this blog going, and may even expand it. Of course, my readership is very small, so if you’re a real human being and you like either site then please do comment or recommend to a friend!

Overnight

Is Chris Marker, at 90, the future of film-making? His latest short, Overnight, is a montage of before and after shots from the streets of London during the latest riots, the before shots taken from Google Street View, and the after shots from the Daily Telegraph. Overnight refers both to the terrible carnage inflicted in one single night, it also refers to this film, made quickly, digitally, distributed via YouTube. It’s a kind of film sketch.

So, is it any good? Or do we watch it because it is Chris Marker, because of La jetée and Sans soleil? I think it is good, but an appreciation of Marker’s work is helpful. It is no surprise that Marker, cinema’s greatest time-traveller, finds Google Street View fascinating. You find yourself in a neighbourhood, your own perhaps, and you know it was photographed some time ago, two years say, but as you clumsily make your way along the roads the idea persists that you are moving through time and space and that it is all one day. There is something uncanny about it, you can see people but their faces are blurred, you get to the end of a street and one step forward takes you to a different time of day, the shadows are longer, or it is raining. The thought occurs to you that this might be yesterday, you may have just stepped back in time. It could have been from some lost Chris Marker film, a sci-fi travelogue set in a parallel near past where people struggle to piece together their present, all watched over by an all-seeing, nine-lensed eye.

Like in La jetée, Marker makes use of still images to make something that feels cinematic. He seems like the perfect director for the internet age, his films were always made independently, outside the usual modes of capital-intensive production. He used still images in La jetée because he couldn’t afford to shoot it as a live-action film. Now, he can make (or compose?) a film which is an instant response. In both cases he shoots within his means, what is important is he has something to say, ideas to play with, and this is what marks him out.