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Disappear here

Two ephemeral traces of cinema's secret history:

• Portable Grindhouse: The Lost Art of the VHS Box (Fantagraphics) is "a feast for exploitation cognoscenti, reprinting some of the most louche, decadent, minimo-pervo artwork to ever grace a VHS box." [via]
• This weekend at the New Museum: Brody Condon's Case is "a contemporary adaptation of the classic cyberpunk novel Neuromancer by William Gibson. Combining Gibson’s 1980s dystopian techno-fetishism with early twentieth-century abstraction, faux “virtual reality” scenes will unfold via moving Bauhaus-inspired sculptural props accompanied by the Gamelan ensemble Dharma Swara.... and the actress Sasha Grey as the street samurai Molly." [via]

Meep!*

Who knew? New Yorker scribe Susan Orlean [whom I've long since forgiven for throwing my undergraduate institution under the bus--literally] was part of the Shaker Heights [OH] cohort that first embraced movies & filmstrips in the classroom--Project Discovery from 1965. Click through for the proper aspect ratio.

*

Not for sale

Once again, La Liz, Elizabeth Taylor, shows us how it's done.

Flickers

In which the cinetrix says, go there, do this.

• Pre-Code Joan Crawford in Letty Linton (1932), via the Siren
• Quentin Tarantino's My Best Friend's Birthday (1987). K-Billy, string ties, and suicide!
• What's on Werner Herzog's iPod? [Still laughing over "Grizzly Bear."]

The Mack

Twilight Spirit from jodie mack on Vimeo.

A beautiful short film by Jodie Mack, whose minimusical "Yard Work Is Hard Work"* blew me away at IndieGrits this spring.

*I totally want the soundtrack, which rivals Interkosmos's in awesomeness.

Road(-trip) movies

Hitting the highway en route to the nearest art house. It's in another state. Back soon!

You know, for kids!

My pal Hugo Perez shot this Read Kiddo Read spot, wherein Jason Schwartzman and his Fox alter ego Ash extol the joys of reading to the younger set. Though I'm guessing probably not "Lamb to the Slaughter" or the works of Jonathan Ames just yet.

Counting backwards

So Shane Acker, the director of 9, the dystopian animated flick about the wee burlap numbered steampunk creatures, gave a talk on campus last night, which I missed. However, the bartender at my local informs me self-same Acker will be out for a pint after 9:30 tonight. Let's hear it for second chances.

Any burning questions for his nibs? Aside from the obvious "what was it like to work with the voice of Crispin Glover?" one, obvs.

Short attention-span cinema

OK, the cinetrix hasn't the concentration to write. At all. But! She still can read. And so can you. Or, you know, just watch. After all, his eminence Andre Bazin says that shots in depth encourage more active viewing.

• Indie IT girl shills cotton, above.
• Spoiler alert! Guardian scribe suggests that, sometimes, foreknowledge is forearmed. The cinetrix loves the tabula rasa approach of the Flaherty, but, realistically, the other 51 weeks of the year she is stuck reading about flicks not ever playing at a cinema near her. So, spoil away. Just write well and I'm yours.
• Related: my most-recent favorite note from an imperfect memory. "We are so accustomed to viewing all films over and over again, the fictitious ones as well as those pertaining to our lives; we have been so thoroughly contaminated by a retrospective technique that we are quite capable, under the blow of contemporary vertigo, to rethread history as one threads a film wrong side up." -- Jean Baudrillard, Reversion of History
• Still trying to decide under which name I submit a bio to criticWIRE.

Oh, and I could look at this Godard intertitle ALL DAY.

[Again, see lack of attention referenced above.]

Why wonder

It's not that easy being green
Having to spend each day the color of the leaves
When I think it could be nicer being red, or yellow or gold
Or something much more colorful like that

It's not easy being green
It seems you blend in with so many other ordinary things
And people tend to pass you over 'cause you're
Not standing out like flashy sparkles in the water
Or stars in the sky

But green's the color of Spring
And green can be cool and friendly-like
And green can be big like an ocean, or important
Like a mountain, or tall like a tree

When green is all there is to be
It could make you wonder why, but why wonder why
Wonder, I am green and it'll do fine, it's beautiful
And I think it's what I want to be