I recently came across two films worth mentioning here. Transes follows the Moroccan group Nass el Ghiwane during a tour in the early 1980s. Nass performs Moraccan chaabi music influenced by the heavily hypnotic Gnawa genre, hence the titular “trances.” They play with the frenetic energy of early Stones to their rapturous crowds. Director Ahmed El Maanouni captures spectacular live performances […]
Tag Archives: film
Sergei Parajanov made art his way. He balked at socialist realism, the Soviet Union’s sanctioned art form, and lived a flamboyant lifestyle that had him in and out of labor camps for 20 years. I first saw Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors in college. The Russian film class I was taking at the time introduced me to great films […]
I’ve followed Vincent Moon’s films since the nascent days of YouTube. It’s near impossible to overstate how important his Take Away Shows with La Blogothèque have been for filmed music in the 21st century. Today you’ll find countless imitators of his style: long, uninterrupted shots that float between brutal closeups of the performers and curious […]
El amor es un intercambio de silencios. Alejandro Jodorowsky is a prophet. If you saw the recent documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune, you know he’s a bit of a madman as well. But for someone interested in psychomagic, esotericism, and penning comics, perhaps he’s quite sane. My first plunge into his world was Santa Sangre (1989) and its resplendent palette, mythic imagery, and […]
Kaka’ako, Honolulu, 2014 I took the train from Manhattan to Coney Island this past week. I enjoy riding the elevated lines for the peek at random acts of art. In my own city of D.C., I recently biked by a painting crew splotching over an especially cool tag. The effects of gentrification ripple out like a stone dropped […]
My first Nine Inch Nails album was The Fragile. This double album, seething with metallic angst, paired well with my high doses of Rage Against the Machine and Tool in high school. At the peak of my fandom, I even saw NIN with my dad at Lollapalooza (skipping Kanye on the other side of the […]
I’m a film music junkie and 2014 produced some especially noteworthy scores. I’ve wanted to mention my favorites on this site for longer than I care to admit. So here it goes. From now on, I’ll regularly pluck out a score, that, for whatever reason, I find intriguing. From time to time, I also plan to pontificate […]
I thought I’d feature someone who recently rekindled my love of animation. Masaaki Yuasa is a visionary Japanese animator who spins surreal, irreverent, and improvisitory tales of wonder. Though they’re equally brilliant, he’s kind of like the anti-Miyazaki. I first heard of Yuasa, I suppose like many Westerners, through his 2004 masterpiece Mind Game. This film […]
Great music offers a glimpse at the pinnacle of human potential. Other music, ephemeral and utilitarian, never makes it out of base camp–or perhaps the gutter. Adult film music likely fits this second description but its reputation may be on the rise. I saw this article on “how sex got its soundtrack” from Salon and couldn’t help […]
