Friday, June 5, 2009
Monday, June 1, 2009
Take Time
One of the prevailing features in the music of avant-garde pop-collagists THE BOOKS is laughter. The sense of wonder and play might be one of the reasons they're not taken seriously, in a form that applauds grim seriousness and esoterica.
The proof to the importance to THE BOOKS, I believe, lies in their self-produced music videos. Since the band had always used audio samples in their music from found video clips, it made sense to source a lot of that audio back to its original video for visual accompaniment when playing live. When I saw the band play live along with this clip, I was completely floored. THE BOOKS manage to take on all of experimental video, found footage, and collage art, and come out on top with one of the most strange, uplifting, and joyful pieces of cinema I've ever seen.
TAKE TIME is certainly one of my favorite little movies ever. This, and more by THE BOOKS are collected on the PLAY ALL DVD.
Oh, Calypso
A scene from Taiwanese director TSAI MING-LIANG' s 1998 film THE HOLE. Throughout this poetic urban fairytale, the characters re-enact musical numbers from legendary Chinese actress GRACE CHANGE. The original, below:
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