My Bloody Valentine Crashes the Internet with New Album

Keeping true to founder Kevin Shields’ word a couple of days ago, the new, 22-years-in-the-making My Bloody Valentine album has dropped. Well, at least I think it has. After posting word on their Facebook page, the band’s website has gone dark, delivering a “403 — Forbidden: Access Denied” warning. We know the name of the album (MBV), the tracklist (below), and the price ($16 in multiple digital formats, including MP3 and .WAV.) Vinyl and CD versions will soon be available. Spoof reviews are already up on the Facebook page, with some posters claiming to be bewildered by the Christian rock,…  Read more

Kourtney Roy’s Cinematic Portraits

At the Telegraph, Anne Billson explores the work of Canadian artist and fashion photographer Kourtney Roy, who draws from Guy Bourdin, Cindy Sherman, William Eggleston but also various film directors in her ravishing, psychologically mysterious, yet bordering on kitsch portraits. From Billson: Where does [Roy] get her ideas? “I’m always struck by images in films. I love Douglas Sirk.” Sirk is the Hollywood film director best known for sumptuous 1950s melodramas such as Written on the Wind and Imitation of Life. “I love the colours and the décor. I really like Hitchcock, too, but he’s been referenced so many times…  Read more

Werner Herzog on Tom Cruise and Harmony Korine

Last year I interviewed Werner Herzog about his Into the Abyss, and before our talk I quickly re-introduced myself, reminding him that we had worked together when I produced julien donkey-boy over a decade ago. “Ah, yes, I remember,” he said. “You know, I have your film to thank for being cast as the villain in this new Tom Cruise movie.” It was the first I had heard of Jack Reacher, and I expressed a tiny bit of doubt that Harmony Korine’s Dogme ’95 feature was what really secured Herzog a role in a mega-budget action film. “Paramount Pictures is…  Read more

Where Are the New Independent Film Superstars?

I was reading this interview in Vice about the Blu-ray reissue of Richard Kern’s short films from the ‘80s, and the names came flooding back to me. “Back in the day, Richard, along with buddies like Lydia Lunch, David Wojnarowicz, Lung Leg, Sonic Youth, and Henry Rollins, made some of the most bloody, sexually deviant, and generally fucked up short films ever,” writes Christian Storm in his intro. Lung Leg – I haven’t heard that name in a while. She was on the cover of Sonic Youth’s album Sister. I wonder what she’s up to. Lydia, of course, is still…  Read more

Can Independent Film Be an Addiction?

Addiction. It’s a bad thing, right? Except that a lot of businesses are based around it. I’m not just talking about the illegal business of selling narcotics, but about other things. Junk food is certainly an addiction, but so are things like video games. In our Fall, 2011 issue, Game Engine columnist Heather Chaplin wrote that understanding addiction — the system of challenges, rewards and dopamaine delivery — is key to any successful game designer. She quoted Dr. Bennett Fody, fellow and deputy director of The Institute of Science and Ethics at Oxford University, who said, “The design of video…  Read more

The Shameless Satire of Lana Del Rey

“The cleverest piece of cultural criticism” to appear in 2012 is from none other than media-made pop singer Lana Del Rey, argues n+1‘s Christopher Glazek in the year-end edition of Artforum. Indeed, Rey’s two recent videos, which have an outsized, ’80s ambition to them, are fascinating jaw-droppers. Here, Glazek gets at why: Men hardly ever speak in Del Rey’s videos. Their silence also permeates Ride. This more recent video follows the life of a streetwalking saloon singer in Big Sky Country who spends her days and nights among the motorcycle-gang members she picks up and services on the road. Although…  Read more

Memories of Mexico

Filmmaker Iva Radivojevic keeps a wonderful Tumblr where she posts short films derived from her world travels and couples them with broader musings on cinema, art and politics. Last year, Radivojevic made fantastic documentary shorts shot during the Occupy Wall Street protests. Now, just uploaded, is a very different kind of short that uses cut-out animation to both isolate the sounds and sights of a small Mexican town as well as function as a kind of representation of memory. Here’s how she introduces it: In April I took a little trip down the Mexico. I purposely left the camera at…  Read more

Buy a Relationship with James Franco for $6,000

A couple of weeks ago we selected Stephen Elliott’s Happy Baby for our curated Kickstarter page, and since then he’s been adding a number of provocative awards to the campaign. The most interesting was added today: for $6,000, Elliott will transfer to you his relationship with the actor and director James Franco, who starred in his feature About Cherry and owns the rights to his novel The Adderall Diaries. Muses Elliott, “What does that mean?” “I’m not really sure,” he continues. “I can’t promise anything from James, but I’ll send you a notarized document transferring full ownership.” Memorializing and transferring…  Read more

Phillip Van’s Amazing Post-Sandy Blackout Photos

Filmmaker and former 25 New Face Phillip Van took his camera out during the New York blackout and came away with a beautiful series of long-exposure shots capturing the city’s architecture and workers without their customary nocturnal illumination. Here’s what he had to say via email: I shot the photos on a regular old Canon 5D. One night I had a tripod. Another I went handheld so I could travel more. The city was pitch black and ominous. Buildings felt like mausoleums. But if you stayed out long enough, your eyes adjusted to candles and shadows behind curtains and you…  Read more

What if You Could Crowdfund a Filmmaker, Not a Film?

Here’s something I’ve always wondered: why are film investments always focused on the film, not the filmmaker? In other words, why don’t investors taking a chance on a first-time filmmaker get more than just the usually non-existent returns from that debut feature? Often what hits after the debut of a first feature is not the film but the filmmaker. The movie gets bought for a modest amount and usually underperforms, often leaving the investors with some degree of loss. But, after that film, the filmmaker is, well, a filmmaker, and in a position to move on to bigger and more…  Read more