Cinema
MAN screens at Chicago Filmmakers on April 21st. It's a special screening with a surprise. Will announce when its listed up on the site with a link to the box office.
(if inclined, please watch the work first...it runs 15min.)
Tomorrow marks the online premiere of my latest work (today for you) which I have conveniently embedded the link in this post. (if you prefer, on vimeo here)
This project functions as both a standalone film and also, a visual single for "Moonlighting MIssion Man", the latest release from my music project MIRS.
Two birds, one stone on the shallow end, a postmodernist twist on a Rene Magritte expression on the pretentious end. Both, equally as valid.
This is the working synopsis or thesis put through a press release blender: "The film captures an intimate sliver into an Iranian American Sufi Muslim poet (Mahsa Hosseini) as she goes about finding meaning in her life. The visual narrative, shot in a classic cinéma vérité style, provides a strong counterpoint to the hidden, synth-driven, processed vocals in "Moonlighting Mission Man". The video eludes to a dual narrative between the film & the music, though kept hidden from plain sight."
Ultimately, this project started with this question, "Is this a short film or a music video?". And for me, ended with identity. (an ephemeral thing, with real-world consequences).
But back to Magritte, and equally, Jean Baudrillard. Why is the opening question important to me? Media (and its contents) by in large is an open-ended question nowadays, and while I'm personally working through the details of this new paradigm, doing so with a dichotomous media might be my best way of processing it. What is a film? What is a tweet? How are they different? These are important questions in hyperreality when words have less direct meaning, and content rules all.
Ok, the time has come. I'm nearing the finish line. And, at this point, all options are on the table.
The first of which, a crowdfunding campaign to help raise the finishing funds for my two feature films (THREE WORLDS / MAN) that are near complete.
These two finish my THREE MARKS, TOO SIGNALS series of works that includes the 2016 release, CANYON. Please consider helping. Please join the mailing list. Please pick up one of these great perks. Please spread the word.
If all goes to plan, launching next week or the one after.
MIRS project CANYON goes live one week from today. (hopefully)
What is CANYON:
a deep gorge, typically one with a river flowing through it.
Two steps required:
a) Order the pre-sale
b) Subscribe to MIRS Youtube Channel to experience the correct mode of transmission.
a deep gorge, typically one with a river flowing through it.
Not only do you get a 2D cartoon representation of me, you also get some quotable gems I've probably (wisely) moved away from.
Cartoon Amir.
In all honestly, this is a cool film series published by FOCAL PRESS with some interesting, and talented(this word is meaningless in many ways, but not always) filmmakers.
I however, did not reread this after it was sent 6 months ago to be published, because, what is the point of revising archived opinion?
With that said, can it possible be the best thing I've ever written? Not sure.
Enjoy, share and let me know your thoughts.
Took a long while to finish this out for a host of reasons, but, the video is now live. I collaborated with my friend Tom Flynn on the concept, and we where both so busy with other projects that it never finalized. The footage, sitting all alone, for many months, deep in the throes of a mechanical hard drive in Burbank. The song itself was released in 2012.
Coming from an acting background, I personally despise ADR. Sometimes, like today, it is a necessary evil. However, with that said, the audio specialist's who make it work are amazing at what they do, and at what they can endure.
On Hollywood films, ADR is par for the course. But, something is always lost in the translation. The level of disconnect from the initial scripted (or not) words, to the performance, to the sterile soundproof booth is the grandest of artifice. I cringe whenever I find myself in that situation.
However, my experience tells me that it's never as bad as it is when you hear it, raw, out of the monitors at the sound studio.
my man Ojan at Stems Post.
One thought of late has been about my relatively recent obsession with animation. Ghibli obviously being the crown jewel of the cinematic version, has my complete undivided attention, a feat of impossibility these attention starved days. My most anticipated movie this year for me, the one that really gets me excited is THE TALE OF THE PRINCESS KAGUYA, and the previous year was Miyazaki's THE WING RISES.
That happened to be my favorite movie going experience as well. I was all alone in the theater.
My reasoning can be in due part to Ghibli's scarcity. Miyazaki is retired, and Takahata I'm assuming will too. Takahata is in his late seventies. They are the last of the 2D master's and with them retired, the cinematic art form of traditional animation will suffer a great, incalculable loss.
I also feel that my obsession is driven by the fact that this process is so foreign to me, but such a specialized gift that is not aided much by other things in it's raw sense. It is an expression from hand to screen. And, I also know with almost absolute certainty that I can never personally draw a 2D movie. (However, I would be more than happy to direct. In fact, I have a concept ready to go, so go ahead and hit that contact button if you're a a visionary first, and a super cool investor second. Thanks.)
We often do storyboards in live action, then film it. The process itself is always a reenactment of something. A reenactment of life when we work in the pseudo realism tradition of today. One that is in love with it's scripts. Of course, cinema is full of examples of people who strove for something else. The Tarkovsky's, Chris Marker's and a grand host of other's rejected this traditional Western reenactment for for something else. I only use these two examples to expedite this thought to page.
Animation to me is a pure process. Of course, massive amounts of man power and time (often much more time than live action) are needed to make it happen, but in it's purest sense, it lives on a piece of paper. Less tools, less middle men, less technology and much more a translation of a dream.
this is my favorite studio logo....
I'm on day 13 of my single channel video work, DROPS IN THE STREAM. My web-host Squarespace is helping to trouble shoot a minor glitch in the page that I'm hosting my project on. It seems that the videos sometimes skip ahead or move around at odd times. The easiest fix so far is to go back to the previous video that skipped ahead, and play it again. However, it should be resolved shortly.
But, aside from this little UI blip, and the fact that a Youtube Channel and Playlist exist for it without any glitches(along with Tumblr), I am excited about its strange development. We got a long way towards our Dec 31st completion, so please subscribe here, or bookmark here.
The original post with the only hint of info can be found here:
I've been sitting on a couple pieces from yesteryear never really sure what to do with them anymore. Two video pieces in particular have stood in the vault since their premieres, both with context specific deliveries.
One particular piece, 2006's ASTONISHING EXPERIENCE BOX SET was a video installation that had its run at the Seed Gallery space in Santa Ana, California, and after, was boxed away indefinitely. Only one DVD was made at the time (as was the plan), and was bid on, but me being overtly idealist at the time, refused to sell. The money wasn't that great anyways, if i remember correctly.
Now, a good many years have passed, and, in due course, the source materials been transferred into digital binary, making it's indefinite disappearance kind of disingenuous these days. My thinking is that, yes, it's stripped of its context in a pure sense, and with that, what kind of a video installation is it, when the installation is gone? And the simple answer is, a video of course. Here below is the description, and some instructions into how to make it work. Or, just press play. I provided some context on its original form below.
_______________________________________
Installation Premiere: 10-7-2006
Online Premiere: 9-19-14
Instructions: Headphones and a dark room preferable. In fact, a pseudo living room would be best (of course, I can't force you to do anything in a virtual space).
Performance Notes:
On Oct 7, 2006, the Astonishing Experience Box Set installation premiered at the Seed Gallery at the artist village in Santa Ana California. The show ran from Oct 7 - Dec 2, 2006. The show was billed as "Light. Shadow and Motion: exploring the way light alter our environments".
The installation included an old television, a dvd player, optional headphones, a chair, and a faux living room setup. In some ways, similar to the old Maxell tape commercials, although the living space was more archaic. On the television, the Astonishing Experience Box Set played as a loop.
This was the only time that this particular installation was made available to the public, and the DVD that hosts the Astonishing Experience Box Set was never played again. The total run time of the video from start to finish was 6:52, and was broken up into 6 distinct experiences. But, in direct conflict with the installation setup, there was no restriction to the viewing of the the video in linear terms, and the option of sound (headphones) was the direct responsibility of the viewer.
Film list from the previous week:
1. Steamboy - Kazahuro Otomo
2. Metropolis - Rintaro
3. Battles Without Honor and Humanity - Kinji Fukasaku
4. Dodes'ka-den - Akira Kurosawa
5. Galaxy Express 999 - Rintaro (the film version)
This was an anime heavy month for me, as I had to reexamine the form for various purposes. The sensibilities at times are out of sync with what I personally enjoy, but in other moments and depending on direction, the works are spellbinding.
Some of my favorite films of all time are "anime", although most of those titles fall unto the Ghibli team, which mostly functions in a separate category then "anime" in it's most common associations. It's almost impossible to dislike what Ghibli produces, but I feel hesitant to even write about those works, because to do so feels heavily redundant. If you don't enjoy what Ghibil has to offer, you're probably not interesting in movies in general.
But there are some other anime classics that remain deeply integrated into my psyche. The sheer weight of imagery in AKIRA, the collective works of Satoshi Kon, and Shinichirō Watanabe's Cowboy Bebop series are some examples. Yes, these examples are generally the touchstones for the genre, but again, I'm far from an expert in this subject.
just gander at the insanity of this image....
I've been on a Japanese kick of late. I happen to return to this culture, frequently, for a vast bouquet of inspiration. Simply, the well is never dry.
The last five films I've watched this week were Japanese. One observation I've made is that the Western Cinematic tradition has lifted heavily from this world, and Akira Kurosawa ( i feel silly leaving a link here, but I'm going to assume that a good percentage of people are not that familiar with him, and do not give the same unwavering adulation to say, Stanley Kubrick) being on the receiving end of this homage ripping, while also being the most universally influential. But aside from the good type of artistic stealing which is mostly an "influential" lifting, there has been a much more malignant form of culture appropriation, which comprises of the more serious form of perjury. And yes, this bad form of stealing is rampant in cinema.
In the prior decades, distribution was the real barrier to familiarity with international cinema. The world, before NETFLIX and the web was a localized arena. So localized in fact, that believe it or not, you'd have to go to a movie theater to see a movie (perhaps a film festival, or art-house theater, school, etc). And, if you didn't catch it, then you'd have to hope for some form of taped distribution. It wasn't till the late 70's whereby people were actually renting and buying movies. At this juncture in the space time continuum, the selection was incredible limited.
With the explosion of VHS and the video store, more titles could be discovered. But, media was not ubiquitous, and our reference points were limited to stuff we heard about, or actually saw; which again, had serious limitations in breath, scope, and in memory. Image those days, in which Wikipedia, Google and Youtube were not at your beckon call, and did not serve as your assistant brain (soon to be, First Brain). Yes, scary indeed.
Say you saw something really interesting in an obscure Japanese movie from the early 70's, and were a filmmaker in the 80's and even early 90's, and you happened to steal heavily from it. In fact, even go so far as to purge it's images, its style, its flow. People would hardly know. Only a relative few. And surprisingly, unlike music and other types of arts, this type of heavy lifting would not even be frowned upon critically, and certainly not by the general movie going audience. For the most part.
The idea of originality in Western Cinema has long been a secondary by-product; a term Hollywood tried to bury (and successfully) in the 50's (purely conjecture here). It's worked. This is one of the only arts where familiarity gets a pass almost every-time. And as the post-modern infiltrated movie making in the early nineties, it was even considered cool.
But on a personal level, I always felt a more kindred liking to original works (herein I'm referring to a more direct style of moviemaking) then post modern assemblies of those styles. But that was then, and now is now.
But, "now" now, is not like the 90's now. People dream up movement phrases like, "The New Sincerity", and while this might last for "now", it can never congeal into anything resembling the classical arts movements of a prior century. Because we have moved past time oriented "movements". We are in a post-movement world; better yet, post-mechanical-watch. Human time doesn't neatly pack itself into bubbles anymore, because it's umbilical cord to our evolutionary clock has been cut.
And "now" is like the scene from the Mel Brooks film SPACEBALLS: Now "Now", Not "Then" Now. This sentence above, however is not my own, i'll gladly admit. In fact, I lifted it from a wonderful conversation between media theorist David Ryan Polgar and Douglas Rushoff. If only cinema were so nice to attribute.
I'll leave you with this apropos image from Kinji Fukasaku's BATTLES WITHOUT HONOR AND HUMANITY
a quantum question....
The last few days had me rewatching, and in some cases discovering for the first time Satoshi Kon's masterwork animeography in full.
I was absolutely floored by his 2003 work TOKYO GODFATHERS, one of only two of his works I had not seen previously. The superb characterization and the hauntingly realistic and desolate city landscapes make this an absolute treat. Choosing to focus on detail instead of the usual spectacle, the city becomes all too tangible.
Tokyo is almost always historically realized as a packed, bright wonder full of flashing lights and bustle, recalling Western interpretations like LOST IN TRANSLATION. It is fetishized in Western movies. And that is absolutely part of its identity.
Kon chooses instead, the everyday sights that people who actually inhabit that environment experience; the alley ways, the crevices, corners, the not so wondrous cityscapes and mundane, grey skylines punctuated by the cold, wet snow. Instead of the Shibuya crossing for example, we get a small corner store, and a drunk asshole who can't stand bums.
The scenes are rendered in wonderment by their sure realism. One of my favorite moments was a three shot master through an everyday, ordinary road safety mirror. This is detail; this is knowing the world in which you create. Maybe I just haven't seen enough anime, but I can't recall many people making this type of choice. It harkens too a moment in Miyazaki's KIKI'S DELIVERY SERVICE, in which Kiki stays in bed, stretching, pondering a thought. I had the same feeling at that moment as well, although one was a shot selection, and the other a characterization. But Kon does both here, and does it damn well.
This was also one of a few anime films in which a live action remake could easily be achieved. However, this would be a grave mistake because you won't get better performances or a more fantastic ambience then what was achieved here. The characterization is totally alive. The tone is spot on. It goes every which way, and this is not hyperbole.
i could go on and on, but I'll leave it here. If you haven't seen it, go find it. Be ready to experience that sense of wonder that appears when form fits perfectly in its container. But, I'm not a reviewer, and this is the farthest thing from that. It's just a personal recommendation. But if you didn't like it after being influenced to see it based on this written journal, you just haven't developed the goods yet. Seriously. Peace.
A beautiful example of a master shot that creates the experience.
This is not the Tokyo we are familiar with in modern movies. (at least not me)
Friends, hello. I have not been writing up on this web device on the regular. Maybe it's a lack of discipline, desire, or time. It can possible be all of the above.
Irregardless, we have been quietly working on new things. Many new things to be exact. I recently directed some web sketches (people get angry if I call them skits) that were handed to me by one of my talented group of writing partners. They are of the comic variety, something which I am not completely familiar with; but it was a blast, and I got to work with some talented, fun actors. I'm not naming the project, since it works best without context for now.
Also, I finished recordings for the new Mirs EP, MEAT ON YOUR LONELY BONEZ. We haven't set a release date, but, it should be available in the next month or so. THe second single (LIZA) should be available early Jan.
Lastly, I've been steadily shooting a long length film/media/whatever project since late Oct. I want to wrap all principal photography by early March. That's all I'll say about that.
Now, there are other projects in varies stages of development, but these are the most tangible items. I hope you guys tune in.
Best,
am
Hello Friends -
YOUNG BUCK is out now, and free to roam the vastness of the internet. Here are three locations where you can watch, other then right on our very own front page.
And when you visit said site, please subscribe or follow or whatever that particular site refers to the act of "subscribing" . Because when you do, I will be very excited knowing that we bonded in some form.
Also, leave a nice comment if you where moved to do so. Nothing in the house of ANIMALS is done by force. But a simple reminder may remind you, how this very little act enlivens our soul.