Manufactured Consent By Hugh Lilly Matthew Barney is an American sculptor, photographer and filmmaker whose most prominent work, The Cremaster Cycle, has been variously described as “one of the most imaginative and brilliant achievements in the history of avant-garde cinema” and, at perhaps the opposite end of the appreciation spectrum, “[a] humongous riff on struggle, … Continue reading
From: Gringo Stevens <senorita66@live.co.uk> To: <film@craccum.co.nz> Subject: This year it’s Enter the Void Date: Mon, 2 Aug 2010 09:39:50 +0000 Last year it was Synecdoche, New York. I imagine you were an Antichrist fan, too, Hugh Lilly, because your bad taste knows no bounds. Go back to mashing F5 on slantmagazine.com so you can steal … Continue reading
On YouTube in four parts, “Painting with Words,” a great little documentary about the writer and historian David McCullough.
David Byrne & Fatboy Slim—Here Lies Love Nonesuch Reviewed by Hugh Lilly Former Talking Heads front man David Byrne is a master collaborator: his work with Brian Eno—most recently 2008’s Everything That Happens Will Happen Today—has been continually inventive, and “Knotty Pine,” his contribution (with Dirty Projectors) to last year’s Red Hot aids-awareness compilation, Dark … Continue reading
Lethem’s creation of Perkus Tooth in Chronic City is a representation of a culture vulture par excellence. Perkus smokes massive amounts of marijuana, imbibes a constant stream of coffee, and basically never leaves his house except for the daily necessity of eating. He is an out-of-work rock critic who, for reasons that are left (mostly) … Continue reading
Our field of vision is so completely limited to his expertise in defusing bombs and dealing with invisible enemies that our capacity to think about the larger context of the American presence in Iraq is replaced by nuance-free instincts more characteristic of the tea party movement. This is likely to distance us from this man … Continue reading
The 82nd Annual Academy Awards By Hugh Lilly The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences held its 82nd annual awards ceremony on Sunday March 8th. After opening with a song-and-dance number from TV actor Neil Patrick Harris—part of the night’s “Old Hollywood” theme—hosts Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin got down to the business end … Continue reading
The legal structure that we now contemplate for the accessing of books is even more complex than the legal structure that we have in place for the accessing of films. Or more simply still: we are about to make every access to our culture a legally regulated event, rich in its demand for lawyers and … Continue reading
Skateboarding, graffiti and street art, art rock and avant-garde filmmaking collide in this doc that looks at the ragtag bunch of punks and weirdoes—probably most succinctly labelled nowadays simply as ‘hipsters’—who congregated around various American art scenes in the 1990s. Among those profiled are Mike Mills, Spike Jonze, Harmony Korine, Ed Templeton, Margaret Kilagen and … Continue reading
The freewheeling, anything-goes ethos of the Internet has given way to a bland echo chamber of ego-stroking. But maybe that’s what’s happened: On Facebook, we can only “like” things that people post; on Tumblr, there’s likewise only a “heart” button to indicate our approval. Twitter has a star. When people write things on Facebook or … Continue reading
