Lost Pet: APART FROM THAT

For the Wholphin blog I'm starting a column about Lost Pets - great films that are lost, not from 100 years ago, but just the last decade....

Read it here.

TV Sheriff and the Trailbuddies.

"Not 4 $ale: A Vidjoe Rodeoe"

The Westworld robot, a video ape and Don Knotts started a pirate TV station. Not a metaphor, this is science fact. They have the finest video switching equipment but only cable TV footage and disco technique. All hail TV Sheriff and the Trailbuddies, a 'video band' who mine old VHS tapes and make golden nuggets.

More realistically, the Sheriff is a guy in LA who takes tons of found footage, from commercials to rare TV to Arnold to music videos and mashes them together to make new crunchy vids. His live shows at Star Shoes in Hollywood made him an underground legend, and this DVD collection of 30 videos is pretty killer.

TV Sheriff’s style is reminiscent of Animal Charm’s transgressive feel with more recognizable sources, and with the speed and techno vibe of EBN (Emergency Broadcast Network – remember them??) and even some of their politics. If Vice magazine’s TV Carnage wasn’t laid up in the hospital, but religiously healed by E, you would get TV Sheriff. Is there a name for this genre yet? Can I make one? Channel Knobs. No that sucks. Knob Surfers? Toaster Heads?

Because, there used to be this primitive home video switcher thing called Video Toaster and…screw it. See – its hard to mash ideas together. But the Sheriff pulls it together in a funny way, always entertaining but also with some social and political observations in there. YES, it is easy to say TV is twisted and sick and the evil tool of rich people. But it’s hard to show that and not be condescending. All hail TV Sheriff and the Trailbuddies.

Slick DVD production is great, easy to navigate and tons of extras, include “collaborations” with Coldcut, DJ Q-Bert and VJ V2, and an introductory essay by Gerry Casale (from Devo), which is like a blessing down from the heavens.

www.othercinemadvd.com

Tribulation 99.

Why are film festivals cool? Because sometimes you get to travel in time. At FLEX 2007 (Florida Experimental) the fest director Roger Beebe brought down Craig Baldwin as a juror and screen his first feature TRIBULATION 99 (1991). Beebe introduced Baldwin and revealed a fact about many of us age 30-40 folks – TRIB 99 got us into experimental film. For Beebe, he got inspired by Baldwin and started making work. For me, it was a new type of film viewing experience all together.

Connecting the dots of underground cult horror, terrifying conspiracy theories, maniacal documentary and avant sensibilities, TRIB 99 is an important a document of the second half of the 20th century as you will ever need. Cramming almost every oddball conspiracy theory – and underground government fact – together through found footage, 50s style shock narration and superhuman editing, TRIB 99 holds up today as it did when I first saw it 15 years ago. At the time, I thought I had seen cult films, but TRIB 99 struck new ground for me. At turns hilarious and terrifying, 15 years later I laughed just as hard and got totally freaked out by this fucking world. Baldwin has cultivated Bruce Conner, B movies and secret reports into a career of culture jamming. We are all the better for it.

So you have the DVD instead of the theater experience I’m talking about. But still a great deal with Baldwin’s commentary and two early, rare shorts by him, ROCKETKITKONGOKIT (1986) and WILD GUNMAN (1978). See where it all came from.

www.othercinemadvd.com

Afro Promo.

The DVD Afro Promo is a collection of trailers, put together by Jenni Olson and Karl Knapper. It is a wonderful and interesting document of late 20th century USA filmmaking. The trailers are of so-called "Black Cinema". Meaning a cinema that is made by Blacks or made by whites but has a predominate Black cast and/or just a dominate Black actor (Sidney Poitier).

The DVD jacket has a wonderful essay by Yale professor Terri Francis about what is Black cinema. What I want to chat about is the making of certain trailers. Better yet a trailer that I believe will be consumed by Black America. The trailers for Boss Nigger and Cleopatra Jones are quite interesting because of the decision-making-process that is involved. Both show action/sex/humor but what is funny is how horribly cool they are.

For an artist such as myself I become interested in how and why things are made. Cleopatra Jones (1973 written by Max Julien and directed by Jack Starrett) is a film about a United States Special Agent, Tamara Dobson, assigned to crack down on a heroin dealer, Shelly Winters. The trailer has the sound drop out twice. It is clearly a mistake but there is something cool about the imperfections of any art medium especially film. What I like about it is that no one thought enough about it to have it fixed. I could not imagine any mainstream white film's trailer with the sound dropping out.

I consider myself somewhat of an expert in Blaxplotation cinema but somehow Boss Nigger (1974 directed by Jack Arnold) aka Boss aka The Black Bounty Killer aka Big Black Bold Boss escaped me. The trailer is a social critique as well as entertaining. First of all the song (written by Leon Moore) is infectious ("they call him Boss, Boss Nigger, he's so bad" repeat). It introduces the trailer so you the viewer is going to enjoy the ride no matter if he or she wants to or not. The song also is played in during action sequences.

After being insulted by the song, the song begins to rescue the viewer. Because every time you hear the song "Boss Nigger," Fred Williamson, aka The Hammer - a former defense back for the Kansas City Chiefs - and his partner, will save the day by "installing Black Man's law into a white man's town" (whatever that means?). Opps, I am getting ahead of myself. Boss Nigger is western about two Black men, Fred Williamson (who also written the film under the alias of Jack Williamson) and D' Urville Martin, riding into a town and somehow becoming sheriff and deputy (I think? I actually never saw the film). In the trailer, they engage in shoot-outs, blow shit up, Boss kisses white women to "satisfy their curiosity", lock up the bank president (a Marxist critique) and arrest whites for using the word "nigger" in public ("two days in jail or a hundred dollars fine", hell I wonder what the penalty for saying "nigger" in private). The four minute trailer has it all; economics, first amendment, sexuality, race, violence, politics and on and on. There is a funny scene where D' Urville Martin mentions that he was a slave "six years ago" then the next scene begins with an explosion. The trailer is one of these things that I put in the category; how can something be so wrong but yet so right.

The Afro Promo DVD allows us to really take another and yet closer look at "why things are made".

Kevin Jerome Everson
Associate Professor of Art, University of Virginia

www.othercinemadvd.com

The Vice Guide to Travel.

If your vacations center around finding living dinosaurs in Africa, guns in Pakistan, or hunting mutant animals in Chernobyl , I have the guide for you, whackjob.

Vice is starting a series of DVDs of short docs (5-10 min each) with a theme to each collection. Vice is a magazine and website (viceland.com) devoted to a nice mix of gonzo journalism and funny rants that is able to say more in a paragraph of brutally honest writing than a newspaper could fit into a safe, libel-evasive feature story. Reporting with an opinion, I suppose. Like a friend in the mini-mart telling you about how trannies used to run the motel down the street, and how it was kinda cool.

Their guide to travel is not about real tourism but chasing down urban legends and internet rumors, mixing in some politics when called for. The Sons of Hunter S. Thompson present Frontline. They heard someone in Bulgaria will sell you a warhead no matter who you are, so they went and interviewed him. They heard about a dinosaur in the Congo, so they went there. They heard about leftover Aryans in Paraguay, so they sent a black guy there to find them. And more crazy places, plus extras.

While I was expecting more Jackass quality, THE VICE GUIDE TO TRAVEL is actually a lot more deep. Solid production quality and actual journalism, having fun discovering a new world and giving a face to simple headlines. Plenty of style to make you interested and also laugh. Earth is a fucking strange, scary place.

Each DVD comes in a probably-awesome 72-page full-color hardcover book. But they only sent me the DVD. wtf.

www.viceland.com/guidetotravel/

Werner Herzog's Docs and Shorts.

Let me get the fanboy shit out first: This is easily one of the best box sets I will ever own. Finally a huge collection of the legendary director’s work, whose behind-the-scenes stories make any American director’s complaints about filming seem like a kid whining about recess. Since his first short film, the now minor Herakles (1962), Herzog has thrown himself to film philosophically and literally to making images, with a career filmography not of blockbusters and stars, but of compelling stories and outsiders as heroes.

Werner Herzog is one of the few filmmakers in history to make consistently great films across different formats – films from 10 minutes to over 2 hours, in both fiction and documentary. Maybe only fellow countryman Wim Wenders is close in scope, while Martin Scorsese has made a small handful of docs, and pure documentary filmmakers, like the innovative Errol Morris, have not had success with narrative features.

The box set has six discs with various languages and subtitles. What makes this truly significant is how hard these films have been to see outside of film festivals and the odd retrospective series. Even with the popularity of Herzog’s narrative features (Aguirre: The Wrath of God, Fitzcarraldo) only one in this box had a wide DVD release – the poetic landscape portrait of the Kuwaiti oil fires, Lessons of Darkness, previously found with a second disc of the rare Fata Morgana, while Wodaabe: Herdsman of the Sun has been long out of print on VHS and Land of Silence and Darkness only recently came out on DVD under the radar of the press. The rest are rare to impossible to find until now, with four shorts available on a disc from England, and the lucid doc about Herzog himself, I Am My Films, previously getting tossed around on a bootleg vhs made from a 16mm print somewhere in the world.



What is apparent in this collection is Herzog’s enduring knack of telling a unique, true story. Yes, you can go on Google and find an interesting subject no one has heard of. But a group of people who are both blind and deaf and still communicate with others? A woman who survived a plane crash then two weeks alone in a jungle? A tribe in the Sahara who consider themselves the world’s most beautiful people? A “documentary” on mirages? Herzog knows a good story.

Then examine the way certain subjects are handled by Herzog. This is his genius. A doc on auctioneers – as a new language. The story of a ski jumper shot in super-super-slow motion, with Herzog talking about him like he was saving the world from killer meteorites. And you believe he could.

Or the deceptively simple Lessons of Darkness. Sure the landscape shots of the Kuwaiti oil fires are stunning. But Herzog’s narration (available in both English and German) and his filming style breaks the situation doooooown. The landscape is described not as Earth but “a planet in our solar system.” The fireman putting out the fires are studied as madmen on the loose.



Or combine these two facets of the Werner with the short doc La Soufriere. Herzog heard about a volcano island about to explode. In the island’s only city, it was reported that a single man refused to leave. Herzog HAD to go to this island to find the man. He took two cameramen and went to the city, where even the snakes had deserted the town. He found both the man and a creepy city that existed only then, only there.

The set is not a complete collection of the man’s work. That would be too mammoth. But with many of his recent titles becoming available – The White Diamond is a great, already-neglected film – the Herzog shelf at the video store is getting closer to perfect.



Herzog himself would shy away from the hyperboly. In interviews he insists he is just a man telling stories and feels his audience shares the dreams he has. It’s just that Herzog is a lot better at illustrating those dreams than the rest of us.

Look - this review is obviously for people who are only slightly aware of Herzog, like they have seen only Grizzly Man. Anyone that knows of Herzog is already out the door: “Herzog box what? Oh fuck – I’m there.”

www.wernerherzog.com

Animal Charm's Golden Digest.

DVD of the year (1984).

The Charm is two men: Rich Bott and Jim Fetterly. They find videos, usually the educational and instructional kind, occasionally the public access kind, often the incredible homemade music video kind, and reedit the footage into a new, organic short film…. er, video. What’s interesting about that? No matter how much the mash-up, you can still sense what the original video’s intention, what it’s sellin’. But the original is so ridiculous that it doesn’t deserve to exist anymore. The Charm’s remix, with jumps, loops and new soundtrack either tells you what the video really meant or is simply screaming back at the original, “You suck.” What’s interesting about that? It’s fucking hilarious.

You know what else? Their shorts are really smart. Not just jamming crap together, but ripping apart notions of selling, deconstructing videos made by companies for strictly its own employees, or championing home-grown entertainment. The forced-joy of owning a backyard full of sports opportunities (“Family Court”) is looped until we realize that suburbia may be the last vestige of Rome. A simple industrial about a company boss (“Mark Roth”) is completely re-understood with a thriller movie soundtrack. One of my favorites is the redux of Bill Murray’s Meatballs where all the shots of Murray and lead kid Chris Makepeace are taken out, as the remaining shots are treated with lovingly nostalgia (“Marbles”, the name of the dead frog in the film). It’s Thom Anderson’s Meatballs Plays Itself for you art fans.

And much, much more. The collection seems pretty comprehensive, from their classic “Stuffing” to Rich’s poignant vocals on “Moving Day.” The extras are great: the Charm’s previously unseen first video - “Sunshine Kitty,” a live video mix from a gig at the Aurora Picture Show (featuring “Wow”), and a video scrapbook of VCRs.

Just buy it and play it at work, dork.

www.othercinemadvd.com

Star Spangled to Death.

THE (REPUBLICAN) ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM.

Aza Jacobs sent me a copy of his father’s film STAR SPANGLED TO DEATH (1957-59, completed 2003-4) for me to review and it’s been staring me down ever since. Half because of day jobs taking time – half because this film is an epic in every way imaginable. Avant-garde, historical, political, allegorical, maniacal: six hours and forty-five minutes of obscure found educational and nature films mixed with 1950s street theater footage shot by the filmmaker and updated with anti-Bush thoughts and opinions from the past five years. That’s right, 50 years in the making.

Ken Jacobs is the man who created this monsterfilm.

The film is avant-garde: styles of editing and photography are mixed and matched, found footage sometimes plays out completely and other times it cuts back and forth with footage shot for the film. Soundtracks come and go between famous songs, narration, religious radio and political speeches. Long sequences of these sounds are over a black screen.

The street theater ranges from dicking around with garbage to amazing chiaroscuro portraits of people, buildings, movements and shadows. The main characters are The Spirit Not Of Life But Of Living (played by underground legend Jack Smith), who is random and wild, and Suffering (the ultimate lovable underdog Jerry Sims), who needs love and understanding in this world. Their street ‘performances’ are layered with various sounds from the found footage, African hunts from the first half of the last century, exotic dancers, and sickening rah-rah America speeches from Nixon and Reagan. Jacobs connects the fairy tales of Frankenstein and the Ugly Duckling with reality.

Text by Jacobs comes and goes, providing social and political commentary (“Forget ‘far-right idealogues’, they’re crooks,” or “Religions are bedtime stories gone amok…”), and occasionally goes by so fast its put into the subliminal realm – but on DVD you can pause and scan and read. This changes the viewing experience from the theater, as you are dissecting it in your own home at your own speed, enforcing the essay nature of the film. Which is: our country was based on brutality and is still sick.

Spangled is a healthy lesson in our country’s sordid history. There is various archival footage of blackface singers and racist cartoons. Reagan speaks of the best country in the world and on-screen text has Christ telling his followers to intermarry with his aggressors in order to overtake them. Jacobs grew up with McCarthyism and sees it in full force today. His comments and film parallels are almost always as humorous as they are shocking, fairy tale as vital opinion, a la Dr. Strangelove.

And while the text tells you what he thinks, Jacob doesn't confine the viewing experience to a traditional documentary way. Spangled doesn't use archival clips edited to make a point, rather entire short films within the film, such as the safari documentary and the entire Nixon “checkers” speech. The Smith and Sims characters sometimes seem totally insane, other times you see people hanging out, walking around and thinking in long takes. Themes repeat but this is not a one-note exercise. Every viewing is different for each audience member.

While this epic is frenzied, you can see the method and enjoy it. Ken Jacobs is known as a powerhouse in the avant film world with his various movies and lightshows, as well as his huge personality that rubs people in different ways – one festival programmer dubbed him the John McEnroe of the avant-garde. But it is this kind of ferocious nature we need from art. People need to be pissed off when they make films sometimes.

www.starspangledtodeath.com

The 70s Dimension.

Other Cinema DVD
Reviewed by Mike, someone born in 1970

We (people in our 30s) have had to endure our parents reminiscing about Woodstock and Ford Thunderbirds and the first television set and long hair meaning to your ears. Well, now is our chance to partake in the same semi-pathetic nostalgia.

What The 70s Really Looked Like, a collection of 1970s commercials and public service announcements, gives some insight into the decade of decadence which gave us sexy cigarettes, incredible technology, new exercise routines and crying Native Americans portrayed by Italian actors that people throw garbage out their car windows at. (Did I just describe the 70s or every decade in the 20th century?)

I wonder – are we doomed to always look back and laugh? I take equal pleasure and embarrassment in this footage. The crackling 16mm film grain is beautiful, the glimpse of long lost celebs punching some strange cleaning item impeccably designed, hair styles I thought looked good then and maybe still do… It's a trap I’m not fair in assessing. As much as I get sick of people sitting around and talking about how great something was instead of being creative or going outside and having new experiences, there is a fascination with one’s own past. If I heard a song when I was five years old in the back seat of my parents’ Gold Duster as I had to pee in a bottle because we couldn’t find a rest stop, it will have a youthful resonance and I say “awww” even though Chicago is a horrible, horrible band. And though I know Godzilla vs. Megalon isn’t even the 10th best movie in the series, watching it is like seeing into the nexus of the universe. Images scar youth.

The spots, curated by dumpster divers Matt McCormick and Morgan Currie, is split up into sections, which makes it a nice disc to keep returning to for entertainment and for glorious trivia games with friends. The PSAs alone are jaw-dropping. And at the end of the day, this is all better than what the 80s gave us.

Filling out the disc is 70s Remix, curated by Craig Baldwin and Noel Lawrence, consisting of six short films made up primarily from found footage (from the 70s or at least from industrial and educational vids) with a new avant video twist. Fixed in heavily structured editing and sound design, the shorts succeed in reinterpreting the original content for new plots while also giving insight into original meaning. They thankfully stray from being ironic, with soundtracks forcing hilarious moments and editing providing some unsettling feelings. Its almost too on-the-nose to have these all together, but it is a sub-genre of underground filmmaking – and these films are goddam good.

DVD includes the shorts:
"The Vyrotonin Decision" by Matt McCormick
"Thine Inward-Looking Eyes" by Thad Povey
"Not Too Much Remember" by Tony Gault
"Toast 'ems" by Damon Packard
"We Edit Life" by People Like Us
"Mark Roth" by Animal Charm

www.othercinemadvd.com / www.peripheralproduce.com

Something Like Flying.

Three films directed by Deborah Stratman
Peripheral Produce DVD









This collection of Stratman’s first feature, KINGS OF THE SKY (2004) and two of her shorts, FROM HETTY TO NANCY (1997) and IN ORDER NOT TO BE HERE (2002) is stunning in both imagery and context. While the shorts have incredible 16mm landscape photography exploring Iceland and isolation (HETTY) and suburbia and isolation (ORDER), the feature is a personal journey with a troupe of acrobats across China, shot in gritty handheld video. This range hints at Stratman’s versatility, always with a dose of humanity. It’s like watching captivating travelogues -- with social relevance rather than selling a road trip. Although you do want to take one after viewing these…. Read the new Cinemad interview with Stratman this month.
www.peripheralproduce.com

Wholphin no. 1.

DVD magazine
Wholphin/McSweeney’s
Reviewed by JonKorn, someone who wants to write for McSweeney’s

There is a moment, perhaps two minutes into his ambiguously titled film PATTON OSWALD STARES INTO THE CAMERA FOR FIVE OR SO MINUTES, where the eponymous comic’s face morphs from a hideous, Boschean leer to an expression of complete and utter happiness. We’re talking unadulterated fucking joy. It’s almost enough to make you think that Patton has, under exceedingly fortuitous circumstances (Given the camera and crew are sitting, like, right there), just discovered the meaning of life. But Oswald’s mug never rests - within seconds his features shift, the light drains out of his eyes, and his joy turns into mindless, unthinking bliss.

When was the last time you watched a person just make faces into a camera for three minutes? Or sat in slack-jawed awe as a nice Scandinavian man sang the greatest song in the world backwards? These and myriad other delights are all available on Wholphin #1, the newest wing of Dave Eggers’ all-encompassing empire of wit and good intentions.

Wholphin does for short films what McSweeney’s has done for short stories, namely, let the general public see what delightfully guilty pleasures can be derived from something with a limited scope (at least in the temporal sense). There are issues that feature length films can explore more fully than any short, but, at their best, the briefer works approach something much purer and, irony aside, artistic. (Yes, irony is a sticky subject here, as the whole disc has received a liberal basting in McSweeney’s trademarked glaze of unapologetic, wide-eyed sincerity. In fact, the mission statement I was able to gloss from Editor Brent Hoff’s ‘Welcome to Wholphin’ can basically be summed up as ‘intelligent films for people who will get them’. So, long story short, natch.)

Ostensibly the first of many such compilations, the DVD offers twelve films of various lineage and three ‘menus’ that are full-fledged shorts all by themselves, including both the aforementioned Patton Oswald opus and Jeroen Offerman’s haunting, backwards karaoke, as well as THE GREAT ESCAPE, another Offerman piece that documents what may be the luckiest moment ever captured on film.

In fact, these menus may be the best and most consistent things about Wholphin, which might have been a necessity, given the means by which they work. Basically, the films play in the background for thirty seconds before the text of the menu fades and suddenly you are watching something that you weren’t intending to see. The whole experience would be a little heavy-handed and, well, insulting -- if these films weren’t so much fun.

The other offerings don’t always get to this same place, a delirious intersection of intelligence and creativity that occurs when short films, or stories for that matter, just get it all right. There are some high points, like Carson Mell’s THE WRITER, which explores the bitterness behind one sci-fi author’s pulp fantasies. Just as captivating is MALEK KHORSHID, an animated Iranian film from the seventies that is presented without subtitles. Not only is the animation oddly beautiful, but it also employs numerous devices that, while they may have been conventions in the world of Persian cartoons, are virtually Avery-esque in their flouting of physics, decorum, and sanity. (Can an Iranimation craze be far off? Might it be just the bridge our societies need to close their ever-widening and, frankly, terrifying gap? Let’s hope so on both counts.) [I credit you with the invention of that term, yet I copyright it –ed.]

Brian Dewan’s THE DEATH OF THE HEN is an excellent example of how specific the short format allows a filmmaker to be. The gentle, almost stately pace of the piece all but masks its inexplicable and undeniably intentional weirdness. Dewan admits in the booklet that there is no moral in sight and his choice to not only present the tale as a slideshow, but also to actually say ‘Boop’ to indicate when the picture should change, only gives us an inkling of what was actually going on in his head.

Some of the other films are less successful than these three, but all are worth watching at least once, which, take it from someone who has watched many, many shorts that make even the worst on display here look like freaking CHINATOWN, is quite the accomplishment in itself.

Maybe I’m wrong, but it feels like the two documentary films, which are both weightier and longer than their fictional counterparts, are meant to be the centerpieces of the disc. Certainly Hoff’s ‘Welcome’ indicates that one of them, Spike Jonze’s UNTITLED AL GORE DOCUMENTARY, was the catalyst for Wholphin itself, going so far as to argue that had it been seen during the 2000 election it might have tipped the scales in the former Vice-President’s favor. The emphasis on Jonze’s film feels slightly misguided, as is it a mostly forgettable puff piece notable only for a hilarious scene in which Al guides the Gore family through a Byzantine selection process for Movie Night that serves very nicely as both a visual summary of the American public’s view of ‘Al Gore: Politician’ and a somewhat damning indictment of Hoff’s contention that ‘this film might have wiped away, in twenty-two minutes, Gore’s reputation as a robot.’ More deserving of praise is SOLDIER’S PAY, a vague ‘excerpt’ from a presumably longer film by David O. Russell, which chronicles an incident that occurred during the current Iraq War and almost perfectly mirrors the plot of Russell’s previous film THREE KINGS. In a delightful inversion of cliché, this is a case of Truth being exactly as strange as Fiction. It also begs the question: where is the rest of this film?

Much has been made of the Internet as a new and exciting forum for short film. And, to certain extent, this is totally true. But the Internet is also controlled, like most of our culture, by a stupefying mix of huge corporations and 15-year-olds. Thus the variety of options on display, while often hilarious, leaves more than enough space for an outfit like Wholphin to stake its claim to an entirely different stratum of entertainment. Let’s hope that the discs continue to feature filmmakers who aspire to create moments of unadulterated fucking joy, which, though brief, are no less worthy for it. –JonKorn

www.wholphindvd.com

So Wrong They're Right.

Directed by Russ Forster
Other Cinema DVD
Reviewed by Ryan, an audiophile

This film is about 8 tracks and 8 track collectors. For the benighted (presumably anyone under 21) 8 tracks are the white frog mutations of audio formats; they’re cumbersome, ugly, and were guaranteed a short life span. They epitomize the ‘70s like cocaine does the ‘80s. They died a gruesome death. For these very reasons, I’ve always had a soft spot for the underdog 8 track. Nevertheless, I remember seeing Combat Rock by the Clash on 8 track and I didn’t buy it. I’m an audiophile and that speaks volumes of the 8 track’s appeal [I’m shocked to hear this –ed.]. And while the compact disc may be the worst invention since mustard gas, the 8 track is just a hair better. After seeing this film, I’ve come to like 8 tracks more, but that’s only because I’d like to [meet and buy an ice cream for] seventy-percent of the females represented in this film. See, these people are total dorks. Not the ironically cool dorks you see at hipster bars, but the kind of dorks you read about in obituaries, the results of gun shots to the head and hangings. They’re my kind of people: chronic masturbators, loners and depressives; they probably go the library a lot and read Celine. Anyway, the girls in this film are totally hot and like Lou Reed (Jesus Christ, what more can a guy want?). I watched this movie with a semi-chubby, induced by the hot girls who like 8 tracks, the Sparks flowing through me, and the constant references to Lou Reed’s albums - yet another highlight of the film.

The filmmakers try to hammer home the point that these buyers and supporters of 8 tracks don’t follow the capitalistic status quo. Okay, I kind of see that, but it‘s a bit of a stretch. These people are not revolutionaries; they’re just dorky audiophiles with no lives. That’s cool; I am too! In fact, the very reason I’m watching this film is because my friend Mike suggested I review it (he knows what a helpless record collector I am and suggested I review it). So while I’ve never reviewed movies - and in fact do not like them - this movie pertains to me and my people. The impression left on me after viewing this film was not the anti-consumerist one the filmmakers tried to push on me, but just how sad and pathetic being lonely can be. These people are on the periphery of the periphery. And while some of these goof balls are just that, some of them - specifically the girl who yearns to move to New York - probably gravitated to 8 tracks and music out of sheer desperation and depression. A few of the people in the film remind me of Lester Bangs - amiable, erudite eccentrics with no chance of ever fitting in (one guy even has a similar Metal Machine music story as Bangs). Some of the older guys and gals are just semi-luddites who never picked up on the newer formats. Others are just out to make a few dollars off of 8 track revival. However, it was the morose undertones and feelings of alienation - the guy who doesn’t fit in at his job - that, again, stuck with me. Being a fan of esoteric music (Lou Reed, the Stooges and Nico) and music formats (8 tracks and to a lesser degree vinyl) is a special thing. That music is yours not by choice, but out of some emotional connection you can’t put your finger on. Unfortunately, this catch-22 is a double edged sword of deep love and alienation.

This film was made in the late '90s and a lot has changed in music since then (internet music, etc). This movie, although recently released, is dated. You'll have to take that with a grain of salt.

Some of the technical aspects of the film: the film stock used reminded me of late ’70s porn (I had visions of Linda Lovelace sucking dong throughout this film; of course, this didn’t help my chubby at all). The audio synching at the beginning of this film is completely off. It gets better later, but it’s fucking atrocious at the beginning. So not only did the film remind me of late ’70s porn, it also reminded me of imported Japanese kung-fu movies from the same era. That’s cool, ’cause I’m sure the makers of this film had a Ramones first album-like budget. While the film might be lacking in the technical area, the filmmakers love permeates this film. Some of the footage is kitchy and superfluous, but what do you expect from a couple of 8 track lovers; certainly their execution of the film mirrors the subject of it. If you like the Velvet Underground, you’ll probably like this film. It you don’t know who the Velvets are/were (RIP Sterling Morrison), you probably won’t. And while that might not be the fairest measuring stick, you have to have a love for music and its formats to get through this film. It wasn’t made for everyone. –Ryan

DVD Special Features:
-Director’s Commentary
-Celebrity Interviews with David Byrne, Tiny Tim, and T-Bone Burnett
-Episodes from 8-Track Mind Videozine
-Behind The Scenes Slide Show
-8-Track History Slide Show
www.othercinemadvd.com