Ben Driving to Port Townsend

Len Lye -- "A Colour Box" (1935)

Luis Buñuel Makes Dry Martini

Happy Friday. Here's some interesting footage of Luis Buñuel making a dry martini. 

Harry Smith's Heaven and Earth Magic 1957-1962

I'm finding the legend of Harry Smith increasingly appealing in our digital age. I like being able to watch rare films on youtube, but there's something romantic about Harry Smith, the bounty hunter of cultural artifacts, going to real locations and collecting objects, compiling Folk anthologies, and making animated films that seem to be made from a secret, ancient, image-based language.

Of Muppets and Men: the Making of the Muppet Show (1981)

A behind the scenes doc with the puppeteering involved in the making of Jim Henson's Muppet Show. Beautiful stuff.

Grazie Zia (1968)

The above clip is from the bizarre psychological drama, Grazie Zia (1968). The soundtrack for this movie by Ennio Morricone is a cult favorite, and readers familiar with my soundtrack night dj-ing in Milwaukee might recognize the music @:43. This film is the source of the beyond sublime "Guerra e pace pollo e brace".

I finally saw the movie recently, from a bootleg-ish version from Scarecrow. It's a dissatisfying, sort of angry and disturbing movie about an incestuous relationship. It's full of great imagery though, as this clip attests. I think its probably even better if you know nothing about the context.

A Page of Madness (1926)

This silent film always seemed like an anomaly to me, not fitting into historical groups or genres of silent film. I was reading about it recently and saw that the director made over 100 features, including Gate of Hell (1953) - which is streaming on Hulu's Criterion section. Also, Yasunari Kawabata wrote it, whose novels and short stories I've read and loved. If you've never seen "A Page of Madness" check it out sometime. It's never gotten a nice release or restoration so this youtube video really is as good as it gets nowadays.

The Finishing Line (1977)

Another terrifying British PSA, or public service announcement, about safety. This one might be the mightiest. It is bizarre, surrealistic, long (20 minutes), and excellent. 

But a warning: it's violent and scary. 

Can performing "I'm Hiding My Nightingale" from Kamasutra

Hey. So I have this German re-pressing of Irmin Schmidt's soundtrack to Kamasutra (Vollendung der Liebe) which I like to listen to now and again. This morning I woke up with one of its songs in my head, "I'm Hiding My Nightingale."

I looked it up on youtube and found the above video, featuring Schmidt playing with Malcolm Mooney-era Can. It doesn't feature them prominently, but its a great little window into this pseudo-documentary, which I don't think is available. It looks like a perfrect example of the half earnest art film, half cheapo exploitation flick hybrid that was really common then, and often had great soundtracks.

Check out those dance moves!

Action Speaks Louder Than Words: Anthony Mann Interview

Recently, while struck with the flu, I watched a bunch of Anthony Mann movies. I was revisiting films I was already familiar with and still really enjoying them, especially the westerns he made with James Stewart including Winchester '73 (the best of them) and The Naked Spur (my favorite). Came across this vintage British documentary about him, featuring a long-ish interview with Mann, above.

Watching a quadruple-feature of 50's westerns was odd and refreshing. It's interesting to note that all the celebrated Mann/Stewart films had mostly different teams making them, and were not all made at the same studio. They can be pretty different stylistically. And they're all really different from what I'm in the habit of watching these days, which is definitely not 50's westerns. I read somewhere that Kelly Reichardt's recent Night Moves was influenced by these films, it'll be interesting to see that one.

They Caught The Ferry (1948) by Carl Theodor Dreyer

In between holidays it can be nice to relax and watch tragic motorcycling PSA's by canonized auteurs. You might be surprised that gothic, sparse film director Carl Theodor Dreyer did an educational short in 1948 if you're familiar with his career. I'd like to know more about the circumstances of the making of "They Caught the Ferry", but in the meantime I love it, its a true badass bike movie that also feels like classic Scandinavian art house filmmaking. And it will make you drive safer.

(((SPEED((OF))SOUND))) Trailer

(((SPEED((OF))SOUND))) Trailer from Brian Perkins on Vimeo.

Here it is! The trailer for the so-close-to-being-done-it-feels-done film I've been working on all this year, SPEED OF SOUND. There's some effects shots still being worked on while I'm traveling, and a few things to do when I get back. But from pre-production through post the whole movie was made in 2013, which was the plan, but still kind of surprising it worked out that way for my first feature. It's already getting submitted to festivals, more news on that and its availability here in the future. Stay tuned!

Psychic Tv - Godstar

Some more chroma key fun, this time from the 80's...

Youth 68

The Muppet Musicians of Bremen

This 1972 program of the Brothers Grim story really disoriented me as a kid, and revisiting it I can see why. The people's faces are eerily realistic and its creepy the way they jump around, appropriate for a story where you identify more with the animals. It left a strong impression on me, and I remember going through a phase where I really wanted to track it down. That was before youtube, and now that I'm reading Brian Jay Jones excellent new biography of Jim Henson I looked it up. Tadow! It's here. Funny how it's from way before I would've seen it. I thought it was going to be from the 80's.

Oceana County Fair

I shot this on my phone while at the Shared Space residency in Pentwater, MI.

"The Music Box" w/ Laurel & Hardy

Here's a pretty high quality youtube upload of the Laurel and Hardy tour de force, "The Music Box". It's not so much a comedy for me, it's more like the funniest horror movie. Some nightmarish parts in it remind me of Harold Pinter or Samuel Beckett.

Live Like A Cop Die Like A Man -- Trailer

Adolfo Bioy Casares & Ray Bradbury

Check out my homeboy Adolfo Bioy Casares hanging out with Ray Bradbury, presumably in Argentina, where, Bradbury says, he meets all his lovers. Seriously, Ray?

Charlie Magnetico

This is a film that Jim Henson made for a Bell Data Communications Seminar in 1963.