Stuff I Dig: Blood Orange

I can't stop playing this song... so dope.

Blood Orange

Music By Devonté Hynes 
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Storytime with Franz Kafka's "A Hunger Artist"

A Hunger Artist | Franz Kafka |  Die neue Rundschau | 1922 (1938 english) | short story

  DURING THESE LAST decades the interest in professional fasting has markedly diminished. It used to pay very well to stage such great performances under one’s own management, but today that is quite impossible. We live in a different world now. At one time the whole town took a lively interest in the hunger artist; from day to day of his fast the excitement mounted; everybody wanted to see him at least once a day; there were people who bought season tickets for the last few days and sat from morning till night in front of his small barred cage; even in the nighttime there were visiting hours, when the whole effect was heightened by torch flares; on fine days the cage was set out in the open air, and then it was the children’s special treat to see the hunger artist; for their elders he was often just a joke that happened to be in fashion, but the children stood openmouthed, holding each other’s hands for greater security, marveling at him as he sat there pallid in black tights, with his ribs sticking out so prominently, not even on a seat but down among straw on the ground, sometimes giving a courteous nod, answering questions with a constrained smile, or perhaps stretching an arm through the bars so that one might feel how thin it was, and then again withdrawing deep into himself, paying no attention to anyone or anything, not even to the all-important striking of the clock that was the only piece of furniture in his cage, but merely staring into vacancy with half-shut eyes, now and then taking a sip from a tiny glass of water to moisten his lips. 

Read the rest here.

It's interesting that I chose this story for Storytime because I was only spurred to reread A Hunger Artist after reading Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener when one of the characters, who also happens to suffer starvation and imprisonment by their own choosing, reminded me of Kafka's classic tale.  

The main reason I chose A Hunger Artist over Bartleby for Storytime is because I thought it offered the better lesson for a visual storyteller in how to make a simple story yield rich symbolic and allegorical visuals in a minimalist (albeit absurdist) way.  
 
Read them both, anyway, since they are enjoyable reads and are also relevant for insights into our celebrity culture and our capacity to be inhumane to ourselves and to others for selfish or even unexplainable motives.  

Although, I can't front... Bartleby was frustrating at times because the narrator  drove me crazy with all the shit he put up with... was his compassion real? was he just scared? was Bartleby more a story about the narrator then about Bartleby?  I'll have to revisit that one another time.    

Video Picks: Shugo Tokumaru "Katachi"

Stopmotion animation made with paper and foamcore.

Stuff I Dig: Laura Mvula

thanks to Lex, who put me on to Laura Mvula:

AllTheBestFights of the week (Jan. 21, 2013)

According to AlltheBestFight, below you will find the best knockouts and submissions in boxing and MMA this week of Jan. 21 in anno domini 2013.  Take notes and enjoy:

Boxing KO: 

Curtis Stevens vs. Elvin Ayala

2013-01-19 Curtis Stevens TKO1 Elvin Ayala by sweetboxing8

MMA KO: 

Vitor Belfort vs. Bisping

MMA Submission: 

Michael Chandler vs Rick Hawn

M1ch43l Ch4ndl3r vs R1ck H4vvn by F3D0R

And, if you're up for more, then check out the best boxing and MMA matches of this week, here.

What you might call... a messy fight

Stuff I Dig: Celia Rowlson Hall

From the L magazine:

This is Celia Hall, auditioning for the role of “Clipboard Woman.” She’ll cry real tears. She’ll bend over backwards. She’ll even make herself vomit, and then she’ll clean it all up. In real life, filmmaker/choreographer Celia Rowlson-Hall’s actually kind of a rising star; you may know her for this Keller ad, in which she gets horny and dies over a pair of shoes, or Prom Night, which was presented at SXSW last year.

Steadicam in P.T. Anderson's Films

As analyzed by Kevin B. Lee:

Thinking on what sets The Master apart from Paul Thomas Anderson’s earlier films, what strikes me most vividly is a marked difference in camera movement and staging. I wouldn’t be surprised if a proper cinemetric analysis found that up to half of the film’s running time consists of close-ups with little to no camera movement.

This is a far cry from the run-and-gun days of Boogie Nights and Magnolia with their stunning array of sweeping Steadicam shots, push-ins and whip pans. But upon surveying his career film by film, one can trace an evolution in his technique. This video essay examines one signature tracking shot from each of Anderson’s five previous features, showing how each epitomises his cinematography at each point, from the flashiness of his earlier films to a more subtle approach that favours composition over movement.

A caveat by Mr. Lee: 

With The Master winning the Best Cinematography award from the National Society of Film Critics over the weekend, here's a look at the evolution of Paul Thomas Anderson's approach to his films' camerawork over his first five features. The video above and essay posted below originally appeared in Sight & Sound.

One thing I wish I had explored in some way was the contribution of Anderson's longtime cinematographer Robert Elswit, who shot Anderson's first five features. The video makes the implicit auteurist assumption that the visions being expressed through the camerawork are that of the director, with the cinematographer acting as a technical facilitator. This of course is a gross oversimplifcation of the collaborative dynamic between director and cinematographer that perhaps gives too much credit to one party.

My dissatisfaction with this reductive approach informs the topic of my subsequent video essay for Sight & Sound, an exploration of the creative contribution of special effects team Rhythm & Hues, as a postulation of the artistic visions brought about by technical craftsmanship.

Story Time with James Baldwin "Sonny's Blues"

Sonny's Blues | James Baldwin | Paris Review | 1957 | short story

John Coltrane: Blue Train by Michael Symonds

I read about it in the paper, in the subway, on my way to work. I read it, and I couldn't believe it, and I read it again. Then perhaps I just stared at it, at the newsprint spelling out his name, spelling out the story. I stared at it in the swinging lights of the subway car, and in the faces and bodies of the people, and in my own face, trapped in the darkness which roared outside.

It was not to be believed and I kept telling myself that, as I walked from the subway station to the high school. And at the same time I couldn't doubt it. I was scared, scared for Sonny. He became real to me again. A great block of ice got settled in my belly and kept melting there slowly all day long, while I taught my classes algebra. It was a special kind of ice. It kept melting, sending trickles of ice water all up and down my veins, but it never got less. Sometimes it hardened and seemed to expand until I felt my guts were going to come spilling out or that I was going to choke or scream. This would always be at a moment when I was remembering some specific thing Sonny had once said or done.

When he was about as old as the boys in my classes his face had been bright and open, there was a lot of copper in it; and he'd had wonderfully direct brown eyes, and great gentleness and privacy. I wondered what he looked like now. He had been picked up, the evening before, in a raid on an apartment down-town, for peddling and using heroin.

Read the rest here.

Aside from the fact that it's a James Baldwin story and it is a powerfully emotional story of 2 brothers in the grips of jazz and poverty and heroin and love, read it for a lesson on how to create powerful visuals and scenes.  And for the ways that Baldwin constructs scenes readymade for the silver screen; either he composes scenes with a background that comments and enhances the foreground or creates vivid moments of such poetic visual resonance that they paint the perfect picture in your mind.

Also check out the Paris Review "The Art of Fiction" interview with James Baldwin.

Life, 8 March 1968 [Photo:  Gordon Parks.] Read more about this special Life issue here

Stuff I Dig: Jake Fried

The Deep End from Jake Fried on Vimeo.
Hand-drawn animation with ink, white-out and coffee.
More at inkwood.net

Last Meal from Jake Fried on Vimeo.

Sick Leave from Jake Fried on Vimeo.

Stuff I Dig: Blind Spot

Blind Spot | Matthew Nayman| 2011 | Canada| Format: N/A| 5 min

Official selection - Austin Film Festival
Official selection - Toronto After Dark Film Festival
Official selection - Leeds International Film Festival

Short of the Week :

Shot on greenscreen in a single take, Blind Spot is a prime example of a brilliant idea executed on a shoestring budget (from concept through post, the film cost less than $2000 for Nayman to produce).  The entire city was composited in post by Nayman’s effects supervisor, Mike Boers, who worked on the project in his free time over the course of six months.  The resulting product is unquestionably well put together. If interested, do check out the compositing breakdown on the film’s website.

Video Pick: El Perro Del Mar "Change of Heart"

An old music video but a strange and simple good one, nonetheless.