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SUPERSTARS
Thanks to David Poland and his Hot Button for posting this link to the Holy Grail of underground videos: Todd Haynes’s Barbie-doll-epic Superstar. The Illegal Art organization, which highlights and exhibits works that tangle with and illuminate the complexities and inequities of copyright law, has posted a downloadable copy of Haynes’s hard-to-find first film. The 43-minute work draws on the same Sirkian influences displayed in his more recent Far from Heaven in telling the tragic tale of anorexic pop diva Karen Carpenter. And while you’re there, check out the rest of the site, which features work by Joe Gibbons, Negativeland and others.
Walter Yetnikoff, author of the recent biography Howling at the Moon, knows something about superstars, having signed artists like Bruce Springsten, the Clash and Barbara Streisand to CBS Records in the late ’70s through early ’90s. Last issue in Filmmaker we reported on the new company, A Record Commotion, Yetnikoff set up with veteran music supervisor Tracy McKnight. Dedicated to music soundtracks, the company is releasing the soundtrack to Tony Kalem’s A Slipping Down Life, David Holmes’s score to Michael Winterbottom’s Code 46, and a compilation of composer Nathan Larson’s work from films like Storytelling, High Art, and First Love, Last Rites. The company went online today with a new Web site. Check it out and note the call to e-mail them the name of your favorite unavailable movie soundtrack — they’ll try to track it down and release it!
