As an addendum to Bowie Week, I discovered this Danny Lohner remix of Bring Me the Disco King last night and wanted to post it here. I'll say right away it's interesting, and I dig it, but I love the original version of the song so much that there's really no room in my life for this. Still, I view this site as equal parts personal journal and information dump and part open-source information for whoever stumbles across it, so I felt I needed to record this for posterity's sake.
The addition of John Frusciante's fragile guitar is a nice touch, and the video is cool in a very 00s kind of way.
Watch:
I rewatched Jeremy Kasten's 2007 remake of Herschell Gordon Lewis' Wizard of Gore. People give this movie a lot of shit because it's a 00s remake, and it's also very of its time; the 00s were just not an appealing cultural time. Also, it has the dubious distinction of having been released under the "Dimension Extreme" label, arguably a driving force in ruining 00s Horror.
This flick eschews a lot of that, though, by building its own little pastiche of a world. As a kind of mash-up of a splatter flick and a Noir, Kasten and writer Zach Chassler (working off the original script by Lewis) create a kind of fetish-hipster-Nor L.A. that's all cool reclaimed spaces and lofts. As Danny! and Tim from the long-dormant Double Murder Podcast observed when they paired this film with the original, people like this - and I think they especially meant Kip Pardue's Edmund Bigelow, a trust-funder who completely dismisses modernity for the look and accouterment of the 40s - don't actually exist. True, and it becomes a bit of an affectation for the film. That said, watching the "making of" featurette after the film for the first time last night, Kasten talks about how Costume Designer Carrie Grace (who also worked on HBO's Doom Patrol) worked to ensure every single person on camera has their own specific, individual look. This just makes me think, in that sad, tired way I used to think when I had some hope and positivity in looking at the world, "Yeah, wouldn't it be amazing if that's the world we lived in? Everyone was an individual."
Is this film misogynistic? Hmmm.... maybe? One could argue the woman - naked, scantily dressed, or being butchered - are mere objects to the film; however, Kasten was forward-thinking enough to cast members of the Suicide Girls as Montag's fodder. Suicide Girls, as I understood it at the time anyway, was a movement by which the participants created their personas and online images based on personal empowerment - the then-exploding internet's first artistic or 'tasteful nudes' movement that took the exploitation out of pornographers' hands and gave it back to the subjects themselves. So just utilizing these particular girls kind of thwarts any sweeping generalization about the filmmaker's motives or misguided M.O.
The world and artistic design in this film are part of my big draw to it. Also, it has a very Lynch-like narrative that I honestly think is fascinating. The idea that "Nothing is as it seems" may be oft-overused, but here, it is most appropriate. Also, both Crispin Glover as the titular Wizard and Brad Douriff as the cantankerous Dr. Chong. Douriff's performance, in particular, hums with a barely restrained malevolence that conjures Dennis Hopper's Frank Booth, sublimated under secrets and agendas. That's the entire movie - secrets and agendas, and when it all comes out in the wash, I'm always kind of blown away.
Read:
A couple of years ago, my good friend Jesus gave me Karl Klockars' Beer Lover's Chicago:
Knowing that I A) Love Beer, B) Hail from Chicago, and C) Haven't lived there for 16+ years, Jesus's prescience took a while for me to fully understand. This has been a 'bathroom' book for a while now, but lately, I find myself deeply interested in the stories of the breweries and taprooms contained in this book - hundreds of them. Chances are, they're not all still operational seven years after publication. That's the harsh reality and also possibly the reason I've become so interested in these stories. Any beer fan can attest to the shrinking shelf space at grocery and specialty stores alike as the "pre-mixed cocktails" craze gains steam. I want all these breweries to thrive, whether or not I ever get to sample their beers or not. I love a great beer-based success story.
Mr. Klockar has a pretty informative website as well, which you can find HERE.
And, of course, you can order the book HERE.
Playlist:
David Bowie - John I'm Only Dancing (Single; Sax Version)
David Bowie - Five Years 1969 - 1973
David Bowie - Young Americans
Windhand - Eponymous
Antibalas - Where the Gods Are In Peace
Testament - Practice What You Preach
NIN - Ghosts I-IV
Adrian Baker & The Dead Neanderthals - Cast Down and Hunted
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• XIX: The Sun
• Eight of Swords
• Eight of Cups
Just a bargain-basement read right now, as I'm taxed and the bandwidth isn't really there:
Emotional and insightful avenues lead to a transformation of sorts. Something good is going to happen.
