LET THE RIGHT ONE IN: a Swedish Vampire flick

A well-crafted horror film in the tradition of Guillermo del Toro's THE DEVIL'S BACKBONE, Swedish import LET THE RIGHT ONE IN ably blends genre chills with genuine feeling. Set in the Stockholm suburb of Blackeberg in 1982. Oskar (K�re Hedebrant) is a 12-year-old outcast who is frequently picked on by his classmates. He dreams of getting his revenge, but he never stands up to the boys. With the arrival of his new next-door neighbor, 12-year-old Eli (Lina Leandersson), Oskar may finally have found a friend, ally, and first love. But Eli is no ordinary girl: she must keep her pale skin out of the sunlight, she can perform inhuman physical feats, and she has thirst for blood. The bodies begin to pile up, but Oskar can't stay away from the girl who has finally given him courage. Based on the novel by John Ajvide Linqvist (who also wrote the script), LET THE RIGHT ONE IN is the best kind of horror film: one that transcends the tropes of the genre to become something new. This is director Tomas Alfredson's first foray into horror, and he doesn't hesitate to include bits of vampire mythology. But his background making comedies and dramas gives the film a surprising depth; the relationship between Oskar and Eli is tentative and sweet, even though their interactions may be surrounded by blood and violence. Composer Johan Soderqvist and the sound department create a fascinating palette of music and sounds that add to the film's perfectly chilly mood, and setting the film in a snowy Swedish suburb gives director of photography Hoyte Van Hoytema a starkly beautiful environment for shooting. Though LET THE RIGHT ONE IN is ostensibly about a pair of children, this is a horror film for adults. There are plenty of scares, but it remains moving and intelligent, a rare feat for the genre.

DARK DAYS: NY SUBWAY MOLE PEOPLE

Deeply moving and surprisingly entertaining, Dark Days is an award-winning documentary by Marc Singer, who abandoned his life on the outside to live in the tunnels beneath New York City for two years. It is an eye-opening experience that shatters ... Full Descriptionthe myths of homelessness by revealing a thriving underground community and capturing their resilience and strength as they struggle to survive.

DARK DAYS, a groundbreaking documentary from British director Marc Singer with a moving soundtrack from DJ Shadow, shows a way of life that is unimaginable to most people. The film focuses on a group of homeless people that live deep underground in an abandoned New York City railroad tunnel. During the daytime they scavenge for food on the streets of New York. At night, they retreat to the tunnel where they have built homes out of scrap metal, plastic, and plywood. They have electricity, furniture, and working kitchens, not to mention community, comradery, and the support of each other. Some of them have lived in the tunnel for 25 years. Shot in vivid black and white, capturing both the grit (chicken wire, concrete walls, all precisely detailed) and the honesty (the residents have hit rock bottom and admit it) of the tunnel, Singer's film consists of candid conversations with tunnel residents, who are intelligent, funny, optimistic, and above all, human. One man confesses that he once had a wife and a child, and that he lost both to his drug addiction (crack cocaine), while one teenage boy living in the tunnel explains that he was abused by his family in Florida and simply ran away, finding life in the tunnel more redeeming. In the film's emotional, understated conclusion, Singer turns to New York City's Coalition for the Homeless for help.

Theatrical release: August 25, 2000 Filmed on location in a tunnel underneath Penn Station in New York City. Singer, who was working a regular day job in the fashion industry and had no prior film making experience, became fascinated by the people living in the tunnel and decide to move underground himself. After two years, he convinced his friends--the tunnel residents--to help him make the film, which was done entirely with borrowed equipment and donated film. Because of the extreme conditions of the tunnel--pitch blackness and rat infestation, primarily--director Marc Singer had the tunnel's residents serve as the crew for the making of the film, as he decided they were most familiar with the tunnel's terrain. When Amtrak tried to evict the residents of the tunnel, it was Singer who intervened, going to the Coalition for the Homeless for help. They cut a deal with the federal government and got funding to relocate the tunnel's residents. Each of them was given an apartment and a job in a work program. DARK DAYS was named Best Documentary of 2000 by the Village Voice and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.

CATCHING OUT dvd TRAIN HOPPING HOBOs:

The phrase 'Catching Out' describes the act of hopping a freight train. In the documentary film "Catching Out," several contemporary hobos dissent against mainstream American consumer culture by traveling for free on freight trains. The film features a seasoned eco-activist named Lee, a young nomad named Jessica, and a tramp couple known as Switch and Baby Girl. In three interwoven stories, "Catching Out" follows these trainhoppers as they navigate between the constraints of society and the freedom of the road.
Newly released and available direct from MicroCinema or at your neighborhood Amazon.com
FOUNDED IN 1996, MICROCINEMA INTERNATIONAL is a leading international rights manager, exhibitor, and specialty markets distributor of the "moving image arts." Microcinema International specializes in the acquisition, exhibition, and distribution of independently produced works of an artistic and socially-relevant nature.
Their mission is to seek out, curate, exhibit, promote, and distribute compelling works to a broad audience via existing and emerging mediums. This mission is realized through exhibition-based events, web-based platforms, educational outreach, modern marketing techniques, and digital and physical distribution.

METHODMAN 'JUDGEMENT DAY' THE TRICKY REMIX:

Tricky lends his perspective to Meth's 'Judgement Day'. This posted version is much heavier than Methodman's original with a darker themed, rolling drum pattern that builds and builds and then pulls back. Builds and builds and then pulls back again. Over and over, never quite finishing you off.

BEING EMO IN MEXICO WILL GET YOU BEAT DOWN

Being an Emo in Mexico can have some serious side effects.
Mob Rule runs rampant. Emo's are receiving some serious beatings from clashing tribes of Punks, Goths and regular citizens and the violence is escalating out of control.
Protests break out in violence, Emo kids hunted, Mexican television and press feeding the fires of ignorance. The media compares being Emo to being a rapist, a molester and worse. With the recent Swine flu breakouts in Mexico, I'm sure these same fuck-tards are placing the bulk of blame on 'los emos'.
I can't stand Emo just as much as the next guy, but I sure as hell wouldn't hunt an Emo down for an afternoon of 'fag-bashing', my mom brought me up to be better than that.

SWOON, THE POLAROID KIDD & CHRIS STAIN

An exhibition at galerie lj beaubourg, Paris 2007.
Soundtrack provided by Fedayi Pacha.



Click Here to see The Polaroid Kidd at the Needles and Pens Gallery in 2007, San Francisco. http://www.needles-pens.com/polaroidkidd.html

Click Here for additional work by Swoon as featured in the NY Times.

If you're down with seeing more of Chris Stain's stencil graffiti, then Click Here.

AIKO: JAPANESE BORN-BROOKLYN GRAFFITI ARTIST

As a founding member of the artist collective FAILE, formed in 1999, AIKO helped fuel the current wave of global contemporary street art with spontaneous wheatpastings and stenciling in numerous world capitals. The artist launched a solo career in 2006 with works on canvas that incorporate collage, stenciling, brushwork, spray paint, and serigraphy. This bricolage technique perfectly suits AIKO’s eclectic practice—a voracious mash-up of Japanese and American pop culture, including comics, children’s book illustrations, advertising, classic movie posters, and soft-core pornography.

AIKO draws inspiration from the urban street, Kawaii culture (“cute” in Japanese), and globalized depictions of female sexuality. While a Media Studies student at New School University in New York, she hid her art in plain sight by wheatpasting images throughout the city. It was then that she developed a signature synthesis of commercial graphics, sexual imagery, and the vocabularies of seduction and fantasy found in print, film, and electronic media. The implied decay of the graffiti-style works reads not only as autobiography but also as a subtle breakdown of surrounding structures. 'Welcome to the Planet of Lady A', for example, features a provocative soft-porn image silkscreened onto a window, all elements reclaimed from cultural and literal junk heaps.

Like Warhol in the ’70s, AIKO embraces silkscreen techniques as the ultimate (and seemingly timeless) signifier of the contemporary. 'Madam Butterfly' elegantly combines a reproduced newspaper image with collaged decorative motifs, masking and transforming the identity of the painting’s female subject. In the show’s title work, 'Love Monster', the artist layers nude nymphets holding spray paint with the recurring tags “King” and “Knights” to capture not only the relational aesthetics of the day but also contemporary culture’s relative ethics. Here and elsewhere, her visual language borrows from fairytales and pulp fiction—virgins and vixens—exploring themes of romance, morality, and religion. Yet AIKO’s energetic works eschew judgment in favor of something more generative, a pop-culture phoenix rising from the real and virtual ashes of the urban street.

AIKO (Nakagawa)’s debut solo exhibition, 'Shut Up & Look', took place at Brooklynite Gallery in 2008. Selected group exhibitions include: in 2008, 'Heart & Soul', Alphabeta, Queens, NY; 'Time Changes', Calm & Punk Gallery, Tokyo; 'PINK AIKO: Brick Ladies of NYC', Ad Hoc Art, Brooklyn; and in 2007, 'Heart Throb', Merry Karnowsky Gallery, Los Angeles; 'Bestial', Iguapop Gallery, Barcelona, and 'Eleven', Leonard Street Gallery, London.

She's showing from April 18-May 16.

Joshua Liner Gallery
548 West 28th Street
3rd Floor
New York, NY 10001
212.244.7415

http://joshualinergallery.com

MOBY 'Shot In The Back Of The Head' Directed by David Lynch

Moby's animated video for the single 'shot in the back of the head'. Directed by David Lynch.
This single has the definite taste of a classic David Lynch soundtrack. One where the star and co-star are driving at high rates of speed, through some California desert, well after midnight, with no lights except of the headlights of a late model American-made gas guzzler. The chain-smoking stars of this film also sit through longs uncomfortable bouts of silence as the cameraman with his hand-held, jumps from 'in your face' close-up to 'in your face' close-up.
This video is best if set in 'loop' mode while the track spins on and on and on. Don't get me wrong, I love-love this antiquated track. It stirs up emotions I experienced when first I was exposed to David Lynch's art. He has made many, many very beautiful films over the decades and I anxiously await the insertion of this track into one of his future films.
Some films That this tastes of are "Nadja", "Blue Velvet" and "Lost Highway". I'm quite sure you can add several other titles of your own to the mix.

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THE FUZZ BUSTS 70-YEAR OLD GRAFFITI WRITER

At an age when most graffiti writers are either retired from vandalism or dead from huffing fumes, Dr. Kenneth C. Hopper is just hitting his stride. The 70-year-old opthalmologist was arrested in Warren County, about 60 miles north of Albany, for spraypainting “ROWLOW” on an overpass. Hopper claims he simply finds the word “intriguing,” but another doctor, Frank Rollo, believes Hopper has been targeting him with the graffiti for 15 years, following a longstanding personal dispute. Check out the local television news report and a mugshot of the geriatric vandal below.

http://animalnewyork.com

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RECOMMENDED WEBSITE: LOST AT E MINOR

http://www.lostateminor.com
Lost at E Minor: photography, art, fashion, design and fuck-ups. Tons of amazing images.

ARTIST: LAWRENCE WEINER

Born in the Bronx, NY in 1942, Lawrence Weiner is a central figure of conceptual art, whose work often takes the form of typographic texts. He lives and works in New York and Amsterdam.

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YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL: A CHICAGO COLLECTIVE GRAFFITI INSPIRED

YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL:
http://you-are-beautiful.com

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STOP MOTION ANIMATION: WOLF LOVES PIG

WOLF LOVES PIG: An animation that manipulates thousands of photographs to create this stop-motion video. How does someone muster that patience to put this together...it's mind-boggling.

STUPID FIND OF THE DAY: USB HUMPING BUNNY

STUPID FIND OF THE DAY: Humping Bunny plugs into your laptops USB port. I'm assuming, based on the mechanism on Peter Rabbit's feet, that he humps the heck out of your workstation! Great for a quick (no pun intended) laugh.

FOG & RAIN

It rained most of the day today, how appropriate for the 13th of April. The fog rolled in, hard, as the sun set. This combo of wet & foggy weather made for some peaceful walking around the city. I really dig when it's either cold, wet or snowing in Chicago, because all of the amateurs stay off of the streets.
Being as this is Chicago and today was the Cubs opener, it was even more therapeutic. The fanatical baseball meatheads were either at the game, in a pub knoshing on brauts or at home, in their 'man-cave' enjoying the game in their Lazy Boy with surround-sound and canned domestic brewski's.

THE CURE COVER JOY DIVISION

Rob and The Cure cover Joy Division's 'Love Will Tear Us Apart'. I haven't quite processed how I feel about this cover yet. I'll need some time to soak it in...I'll get back to you on this subject.
This video is a 'fan created' video and I'd like to ring the neck of who ever spliced kitty cats into it! Dork.

DAVID LYNCHs 'NADJA' featuring PORTISHEAD

A clip from a rare David Lynch flick entitled 'Nadja'. Filmed entirely in black & white, utilizing a Sony childrens toy 'My 1st Sony' camera. This camera shot film in pixel images. Original soundtrack was furnished by Portishead. Peter Fonda starred as the off color vampire slayer. If you can find this DVD, snatch it up.

DAVID LYNCHs 'NADJA' featuring PORTISHEAD

A clip from a rare David Lynch flick entitled 'Nadja'. Filmed entirely in black & white, utilizing a Sony childrens toy 'My 1st Sony' camera. This camera shot film in pixel images. Original soundtrack was furnished by Portishead. Peter Fonda starred as the off color vampire slayer. If you can find this DVD, snatch it up.

DAVID LYNCHs 'NADJA' featuring PORTISHEAD

Here is an old trailer to David Lynch's black & white vampire classic 'Nadja'. Original soundtrack was supplied by Portishead.

MASSIVE ATTACK 'RISINGSON' vs MADONNA 'YOU MUST LOVE ME'

Another beautifully black video mash-up featuring Massive Attack's 'risingson' and a witchy, witchy Madonna performing her 'you must love me' track.

MASSIVE ATTACK vs PRODIGY

MASSIVE ATTACKs 'ANGEL' vs PRODIGYs 'VOODOO PEOPLE'. This video tastes of a Guy 'Mr. Madonna' Ritchie flick: music, action, color and the impending threat of an ass-whooping. Keep your eyes peeled for cameo appearances by the boys of Prodigy throughout.

MASSIVE ATTACK vs PORTISHEAD 'GLORY BOX'

One of the most beautiful bands (portishead), singing one of the most beautiful songs (glory box) mate up with Massive Attack (sans Tricky), to float the boats of some very, very fortunate fans.

WATER TOWER:

Decorated in cell phone antennas, straddling a car wash and a wholesale cigarette shop, in a neglected stripmall somewhere outside of Warrenville, IL.

WATER TOWER:

This old guy sticks out like a sore thumb in the Suburbs of Bolingbrook, IL where its been planted for at least the last 30 years. It stands strangely overlooking a playground with cookie-cutter, 2-story houses packed tightly around it on 3 sides.
It also reminds me of one of those 'walkers' from War of the Worlds. I expected that at any moment it would free itself of its concrete anchors and make a run for the swingset in the park across the street.

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Since I started this Blog Page a couple of weeks ago, I've been terrified to start. I go to this page almost daily, open it up and freeze. I keep asking myself 'How do I get it started? How do I make the layout pretty?'
Do I need to run to the Barnes and Nobles to purchase a copy of 'Bloggin for Dummies'? I'm starting to think so.
I'll give it a couple of more days. Maybe I'll have a 'vision' or some sort of spiritual moment of enlightenment.