Electroclature Volume Two

March 20, 2024

Part two of a series of music mixes! Learn more here!

Apart from the pink, I do not love this very, very old cover, designed around the end of the modern grunge design movement. The kerning sucks and there’s no enumeration for the tracks. I have no idea what I was thinking apart from probably trying to kill some 3AM insomnia boredom.

Also, I was probably altered, as is pretty much bog-standard for 3AM insomniacs.

However, I will note that — like almost all of these cover designs — the photo is from my library (albeit heavily tweaked) so it has that going for it.

Also, it does have my favorite SLEATER-KINNEY song — ‘Hollywood Ending’ which, admittedly is probably no one else’s fav SLEATER-KINNEY song. (Seriously, one of these days I’ll figure out how to emblazon the lyrics “WHEN THE LIGHTS ARE SHOUTING?! YOU SEE MY SKIN!!” on me.)

It also features a track from one of the best named bands ever: CASIOTONE FOR THE PAINFULLY ALONE.

Anyway, here’s the proper track listing! (Artist / album / song title):

  • JUN FUKUDA / KILLER7 OST / Techs Mecks
  • VITALIC / OK Cowboy / U & I
  • PAAVOHARJU / Summer and Smiles of Finland / Valo Tihkuu Kaiken Läpi
  • AKIRA YAMAOKA / SILENT HILL 2 OST / True
  • YEAH YEAH YEAHS / Show Your Bones / Gold Lion
  • MORNING MUSUME / OSU! TATAKAE! OUENDAN! OST / Koi no Dance Site
  • SLIM CESSNA’S AUTO CLUB / Jesus Let Me Down / Hold My Head [Live]
  • SLEATER-KINNEY / One Beat / Hollywood Ending
  • FREEZEPOP / Hi​-​Five My Remix / Stakeout [Donnerschlag]
  • BIT SHIFTER / Information Choice / Hexadecimal Genome
  • SASKROTCH / Nintendo Breakz Volume One / In The Next Room Lies Our Destiny
  • CASIOTONE FOR THE PAINFULLY ALONE. / Etiquette / Scattered Pearls
  • J.U.F. / Gogol Bordello Vs. Tamir Muskat / Onto Transmigration
  • SONS & DAUGHTERS / The Repulsion Box / Rama Lama
  • MASAFUMI TAKADA / KILLER7 OST / Visionary Community
  • B. FLEISCHMANN / The Humbucking Coil / Broken Monitors

Electroclature Volume One

March 19, 2024

Part one of a series of music mixes! Learn more here!

No proper cover for this exists but the tracklist remains, although it is just a handful of artists.

Highlights? It kicks right out of the gate with DeVotchKa’s ‘The Enemy Guns’, of whom we were introduced to by a friend when they were touring with DITA VON TEESE and yes, she did the martini strip to close the act. (See above. That is an actual thing.)

An aside! Revisiting these mixes has reminded me that I have lived quite the life. Not as much as some, but probably more than others. Do as much as you can with the time you have and throw fingers at fear, y’all!

GOGOL BORDELLO is …complicated. We saw them at the now-kinda-musty Chicago venue The Vic that? Ironically? Smelled a lot better when they allowed smoking. Amazing show. At the end of the night my hands were swollen by my own applause.

MARTIAL? Yeah, my Vermont is showing. Since the hometown I grew up in was so close to Montreal, we were taught French at an early age — literally part of the curriculum — so I have a predilection for this sort of thing and between this and the string work? It lights me the fuck up.

Bookending matters, yes, DeVotchKa’s ‘How it Ends’, and it did find its way into our wedding playlist, this playlist that vastly predates our wedding. So, while there’s a lot of repetition here, this mix? All of it is quite foundational.

As with all of these posts, I’ll attempt to include a Spotify playlist but some of the tracks are simply not available via ’em, so I’ll try to find other ways to include them one way or another sooner or later but? If one isn’t available? Please excuse their absence and try to hunt ’em down yourself!

(Artist / Album / Song):

  • DeVotchKa / How it Ends / The Enemy Guns
  • DJ EARWORM / null / Just Let Go in L.A.
  • DeVotchKa / How it Ends / Charlotte Mittnacht (The Fabulous Destiny Of…)
  • DeVotchKa / How it Ends / How it Ends
  • m83 / before the dawn heals us / a guitar and a heart
  • TOM WAITS / Real Gone / Hoist that Rag
  • GOGOL BORDELLO ~ J.U.F / GOGOL BORDELLO ~ J.U.F / Last Wish of the Bride
  • JUNO REACTOR / Labyrinthj / Conquistador II
  • LO-BAT vs BENETBENE / null / document1
  • MARTIAL / Premier pas / Pour une vie bien différente

Electroclature: An Array of CD Mixes

March 18, 2024

Gonna try something a bit different, especially since I’m feeling burned out at the moment.

If you are of a certain age, you may fondly remember mix tapes or mix CDs.

You know? Actual physical items that you had to spend a lot of time and effort to pass off to someone in hopes they’d like your musical taste? And once you did so, it was nothing you could reclaim? It wasn’t just a fucking Spotify click?

I made my wife a lot of mix CDs.

A LOT. Can’t even enumerate them via all of my digits.

I’ll note? We both were pretty hardcore about our goth/industrial music scene and we both booked acts and DJed and all of that, so … not unwanted. I wasn’t that dude. (I’ll briefly note? It’s sad that these spaces are few and far between now. I have no idea how other misfits find each other in this day and age. Apparently they …just don’t?)

It was just something I did because it was fun! Can’t we all have some fun without expectations?

(This is actually why I created this blog.)

I’d also design covers for said mixes before pressing it into her hands. The image above? Me.

I’ve been rediscovering a lot of the albums and cover art as of late and, not to toot my own horn but I’m really enjoying this trip down memory lane!

So if I have to have my fun, you do too!

A brief aside: I do not have all of the covers for each and every mix. (Cut me some slack! It’s been over a decade!)

Also, this will be an intermittent feature, simply because prepping all of the artwork, hunting down the necessary tracks, writing remembrances, etc. will be exhausting. I hope ya enjoy it, though!

Lastly: I’ll note that, despite the label for this being ‘Electroclature’? Not all of the tracks are electro! Please do not be upset or pedantic about that. My blog, my rules!

Top 96 Rom-Coms

March 11, 2024

I am a huge fan of Alana Bennett. Been following her work for a while, even before she was writing for the ROSWELL reboot.

She has an intermittently updated Substack and over a year ago she compiled a list of the best 96 rom-coms according to her students.

I love rom-coms but, as noted in prior posts, I have penned a few romantic works, however they are more romantic dramas or romantic thrillers. I have given up on trying to write a rom-com of my own because every time I start with the best of intentions, it ends up going sideways.

Here’s the piece!

I will be blunt: I had to look up a number of the titles to recall if I had seen them before, and more often than not I realized that oh, not only didn’t I see it, I saw them opening weekend in a theater.

I have seen over two-thirds of these. 69, in fact. (Har har, but fitfully true, and the inverse of the numerical list!)

Most of the rest I am familiar with and almost all on my watchlist. (My watchlist is a very long list, y’all!)

If I had to pick just one of these to show to someone who had never seen anything on this list? Cripes that’s Sophie’s Choice tough, but probably DOWN WITH LOVE. It’s a very accessible and winsome take on the Rock Hudson/Doris Day classic PILLOW TALK.

If I was sat down and told: “Watch one of these you’ve missed, right now” I would pick AUSTENLAND. I didn’t read Jane Austin’s works until later in my life and, while I’m more of a Bronte person, that sounds very much in my wheelhouse.

I have watched AUSTENLAND since penning a draft of this post, so maybe HOW TO BE SINGLE is next? I dunno. Not on the list, but I am literally writing a novel that dovetails with wedding dresses so perhaps 27 DRESSES.

(Update: I’ve since watched 27 DRESSES which is far better than you would think! Also re-watched MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING with my Greek wife, as well as the underrated MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING 2!)

If I had to add one rom-com to this specifically young list, it’d be DEFINITELY, MAYBE. That film is severely unsung and so, so, so very 90s.

Anyway! Watch rom-coms, y’all! Even if you don’t think they’re for ya! I guarantee you that at least a few will resonate and make you a better person. Rom-coms are all about someone’s wants-and-needs and hopeful expectations and lust for life and awareness of disappointments and every emotion all at once.

THE DEVIL FINDS WORK (1976) [REDUX]

March 8, 2024

When I first started this blog roughly three years ago, it was solely to briefly mention films and TV shows that I found remarkable. To boost works that fell through the cracks. It grew from that, to more long-form essays, more personal examinations, more experimental takes on how one — and others — examine media.

Apart from fellow classmates, I’ve never known anyone who is familiar with any of the works I’ve extolled over the past two weeks. All of these works were imparted to me in a collegiate atmosphere, but all helped to form my idea of, not only what film criticism and analysis could be, but also what film could be.

I have no idea whether these works will do the same for you but, like the other entries in this blog, I hope they’ll prod you to seek them out, even if some of them sound too dry or academic.

The sole work I’m including here that I wasn’t introduced to in school is James Baldwin’s THE DEVIL FINDS WORK, the last post in this series. I previously wrote about THE DEVIL FINDS WORK here. I’d suggest reading that before going further, but hopefully it’s not a necessity.

Not mentioned in that post is that I was only aware of Baldwin because of his fictional works and activism. If you haven’t read GIOVANNI’S ROOM? That is an essential read, especially if you are queer.

My prior post regarding THE DEVIL FINDS WORK touches on many of the words I’ve posted about in this series, and like in that post, I will express my frustration that THE DEVIL FINDS WORK was not part of any of my curriculum. Baldwin was an expert cultural and media critic and his essays are absolutely essential in examining cinema.

To bluntly underscore matters: I am still pissed off that I discovered it so late in life, not just at the teachers I had (many of whom I love dearly) but at myself for not finding a way to have that text in my hands earlier.

THE DEVIL FINDS WORK is that good. It is that important. It is relevant. Like FROM CALIGARI TO HITLER it examines the cultural impact of populist media regarding race, class, and sexuality. Also? It’s so well-penned and, while it will make you angry — at culture, at people, at the world in general — it is so very readable.

I plan to follow this series up with an array of modern film criticism and analysis that has influenced me since. I’d love to say that, due to the Internet, there’s never been a better, more egalitarian time to write about film and have your words read and seen, but I’d be lying.

There was a brief period of time where astute film criticism and analysis was boosted by the Internet and everyone could have their own platform via their own website and others could be inspired by others.

Thanks to the bubbles created by social media, YouTube clickbait, Rotten Tomatoes, et al.? Those times are over, at least for now.

That doesn’t stop folks like myself from finding ways to write about film or media in general, and there are so many folks from so many walks of life who are doing the same, and it can often feel like screaming into the void, but they are there if you seek them out.

If you don’t make that attempt? Well, you are just as guilty as I was for not seeking out THE DEVIL FINDS WORK earlier.

You can get a copy of THE DEVIL FINDS WORK via Matt Zoller Seitz’s store!

HOLLYWOOD BABYLON (1959)

March 7, 2024

Okay. Kenneth Anger.

Brilliant experimental, extremely queer filmmaker. (You haven’t lived until you’ve seen LUCIFER RISING, or SCORPIO RISING, or a double-feature of both.)

Yes, he had a problematic history with Hollywood.

HOLLYWOOD BABYLON, while supremely entertaining to read and so, so fucking lurid — as you can tell by Jayne Mansfield’s tits all on display on the cover and is fodder for Anger, peppering her death in the work — is full of so many half-truths and fabrications. Oh, and a lot of sex. Also? A lot of queer misattributions? (I think that’s mostly well-wishing on his behalf.)

However! There’s nothing more Hollywood than false narratives!

Oh, did I mention that Anger first used a pen name for the initial edition of the book? It was initially published in Paris? Also, it was fucking banned!

I still don’t exactly know what possessed him to write this, apart from a cultural infatuation with the material. He also wrote two more in the series! (Good luck finding the third!) It feels like a career killer, hence the pen name and Paris publishing, but I do not care! It’s a fun lark that is emblematic of how fucking ruthless and hedonistic Hollywood and the film industry is, and even if half of HOLLYWOOD BABYLON are lies? Well, history is penned by the winners.

There’s a lot of sadness conveyed here. Suicides. Drugs. Bad sex. Trauma. The whole gamut of success biting you in the ass.

These stories are close enough to the truth. It’s insider tabloid journalism, plain and simple.

This is a work that should be read, but honestly? I can’t justify recommending it to everyone apart from gazing at the treasure-trove of archival images of Hollywood stars and sets and history. If you haven’t read it and none of the above sounds appealing? Just stop right here. It is cruel navel-gazing. No one here deserves this brutal treatment, because that’s what it is.

I know that we culturally love to cut down those who have managed to make it to the top, those who are exemplary at entertaining and giving the world some fucking joy because they’re magnanimous, attractive, smart, savvy, witty, smirky, stylish.

One thing we forget about film, solely because the people involved are simply visages on a screen, is that they are fucking human and deserve the rights and consideration any of us want.

Does HOLLYWOOD BABYLON — especially the latter two works? — provide that? No. Not at all.

Is it a remarkable work? Yes, yes it is. It made a significant cultural impact. It is worth reading simply to experience how fucking dirty and tawdry the film industry is. You can simply read the words above instead of enduring how dirty reading the full work will make you feel.

PROSPERO’S BOOKS/BEING NAKED PLAYING DEAD (1991/1996)

March 6, 2024

Peter Greenaway’s PROSPERO’S BOOKS was one of the first films I watched that made me exclaim: “Wait, you can do this with film? This is fucking incredible and mesmerizing and so rich!”

Then I found myself flabbergasted, without words as how astounding this adaptation of THE TEMPEST was.

(I will note: I was lucky enough to see Greenaway lecture after a screening of THE PILLOW BOOK. It was just as elucidating and British and pretentious as you might think!)

So, what you might not know is that there’s an entire book that details not just the script of PROSPERO’S BOOKS, but also drafts and illustrations and more detailing the work behind the production.

I happened upon it while garagesaling and was shocked to have stumbled upon it because? Yes, I fucking love this film, and to have such a gloriously detailed work that features so many film captures and details so much of process and also contains the full script is a marvel.

I’ll also note? PROSPERO’S BOOKS has never received a quality digital transfer. I do have a Blu-Ray of it, but it’s a shitty transfer of the really shitty DVD transfer. Maybe one of these days it’ll get the visual justice it deserves.

Either way, if you can find a copy of this text? (It is very hard to find now, sadly, since folks like me hold their copies tight.) I can’t recommend it highly enough. It’s a rare look into a rather secretive creator, and the fact that it’s one of his greatest works is just icing on the cake.

Prior to procuring a copy of PROSPERO’S BOOKS, I somehow finagled a copy of BEING NAKED PLAYING DEAD by Alan Woods.

I’d like to say it was at a screening of THE PILLOW BOOK in Chicago, at the prior lakefront version of Chicago’s THE FILM CENTER, but that’s impossible as THE PILLOW BOOK is heavily detailed in said text, and Greenaway was there to discuss his oeuvre as part of the film’s launch.

What drew me to Greenaway initially was his overlapping and juxtapositions of images. I found them so deep, so painterly, so mannered in their overlays.

His works used all of the trappings of modern music videos — this was at a time where most music videos weren’t even considered low art — and imbued life and nuance and meaning into them.

Upon visiting his older works, I realized he had been doing the exact same thing — albeit without the elaborate digital and VFX — with text and landscapes for quite some time.

It was BEING NAKED PLAYING DEAD that brought most of that to my eyes.

This is an immaculately designed text, one that is so visually sumptuous. If you’ve seen the frame from the film Jones utilizes for a point? You can’t help but think: “That is the perfect frame. That encapsulates everything!”

Enough cannot be said for the graphic designer. While over-intricate designs were the style of the 90s — holy fuck do I miss that, as opposed to the cookie cutter templates that passes for design today — Jones’s paragraph and quotational structure almost mirrors Greenaway’s. It is succinct.

Not only is it perfectly designed, but it’s a brilliant collection of visual and textural artifacts, interview excerpts, all to accompany an in-depth analysis of his work. Woods set out to create a definitive look at Greenaway’s career and succeeded wildly.

Unlike PROSPERO’S BOOKS, you can procure a copy of BEING NAKED PLAYING DEAD relatively easily, both in hardcover and softcover.

Additionally, there is a scanned copy available via archive.org if you must, but this is a work that can only be fully appreciated in your hands.

BREAKING THE GLASS ARMOR (1988)

March 5, 2024

Author’s Note

I wrote this before David Bordwell passed. While his wife was the one who penned this work, the two of them were an unstoppable team of film academics who instilled and imbued so much knowledge into the world. I’m devastated that David is no longer with us, but his legacy will live on, and he was writing up until the very end.

If you are a film criticism/theory nerd, Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell are perhaps the goddamn greatest film couple in history. If you’ve taken a film class, you have almost inevitably been assigned one of their texts, probably FILM ART: AN INTRODUCTION or FILM HISTORY: AN INTRODUCTION.

Bordwell and Thompson are so astute and knowledgable while also being clear and never talk down via their work. They want to impart their love of film, as well as what they’ve gleaned over the years.

Kristin Thompson’s BREAKING THE GLASS ARMOR was a fucking revelation for me. Thompson breaks down her dissection of film criticism and analysis, which mostly consists of: fucking take different approaches to discuss works as deemed necessary.

Neoformalism is derived from Russian Formalism and — more or less — can be boiled down to discussing films based on form, context, authorial intent, and how every aesthetic facet of a creative piece works towards a central thesis, and scrutinizing that requires separate analytical approaches.

Thompson puts it this way:

“The aim of the formalist method, or at least one of its aims, is not to explain the work, but to call attention to it, to restore that ‘orientation towards form’ which is characteristic of a work of art.”

[…]

“But most important, neoformalism treats audience response as a matter of education about and awareness of norms, not as a matter of passive acceptance of norms imposed by the makers of popular films.”

BREAKING THE GLASS ARMOR, pg. 32

Does neoformalist analysis always work? No, no it does not, but canny viewers can still suss out a work’s contextual manifesto, and are able to point at how almost every facet of a work bolsters the collective voice.

(I’ll note that the film teacher that assigned this text also imbued in me the idea that no one sets out to make a bad film. The next time you want to rip a film a new one? Please keep that in mind. Be gracious with your criticism!)

BREAKING THE GLASS ARMOR dissects a number of classic films, all films that I absolutely love, and some that so few have seen: Godard’s vastly underseen TOUT VA BIEN, which is a fucking marvel of the complexities of communications and so, so very Brechtian; Tati’s PLAYTIME, which is perhaps the most astoundingly amusing and well-blocked non-silent-but-silent film ever; the nebulous nature and unreliable narrative of the film adaptation of LAURA from Otto Preminger; Ozu’s steadfast camerawork for LATE SPRING.

As noted above, this is a very accessible and thoughtful and insightful work, one that doesn’t rely of the impenetrable nature of academia. It made me see film and artistic works in a completely way, and I can’t thank Thompson enough for penning this work.

You can buy it via Princeton University Press!

MEN, WOMEN, AND CHAIN SAWS (1992) [REDUX]

March 4, 2024

While I’ve already extolled the feminist triumph of Carol L. Clover’s MEN, WOMEN, AND CHAIN SAWS, I couldn’t let it go without mentioning it this week.

I know horror is often written off as cultural garbage, as schlock, instead of the cultural barometer it actually is. I would dare say it’s the most relevant genre.

The subtext of horror works speaks to our insecurities, our fears, our dangers, our own worries about what we’re capable of and what terrors and malice others are capable of.

Clover scrutinizes all of that and clearly and succinctly details how imbalanced gender is in the world we live in and how these works — and horror in general — are more often than not treatises on living a life cautiously.

To say this is an groundbreaking work doesn’t even begin to do it justice. At a time when folks simply shrugged at genre work, she took it seriously and thoughtfully penned about horror in a way that resonates today.

Also, I just want to note that I love how she refers to chainsaws in the broken text of THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE. *chef kiss*

THE HAUNTED SCREEN (1947)

March 1, 2024

Lotte H. Eisner is probably a name not known to you. If you are aware of her, give yourself a pat on the back.

She was a film fanatic, and instrumental to the New German Cinema movement which was an extremely productive, prolific and revolutionary time for filmmaking in Germany in the 1970s.

Born in 1896, she was a mentor to so many filmmakers. She had a brilliant eye for visual communication, so it’s no surprise that she was so taken with German Expressionism.

However! She is best know for penning and collecting THE HAUNTED SCREEN, which is her brazenly extolling the striking visual technicals of German Expressionism.

While her deep dive into films that are mostly either lost or forgotten, what makes this work really shine are the film captures.

Like any good goth, as a college youth I photocopied each and every page with a screenshot and cut and plastered it to my walls, because there is nothing more goth than German Expressionism. I even made tape cover montages through the images, as was the style of the times.

If you are not familiar with German Expressionistic films, here’s your introduction. If you are, but haven’t read it? You will find comfort in it. It’s a great read, one that should be on every cineaste’s book list.

It is available via the University of California Press!