Terri Timely (Ian Kibbey and Corey Creasey)

        Putting together this post required an unprecedented amount of unnecessary sleuthing on my part, caused by the deceptive name Terri Timely (which is two people and neither of their names are Terry). The confusion started while watching St. Vincent's music video for Actor Out of Work which is in some placed credited to "Terri Timely", and in others to "Ian Kibbey and Corey Creasey". It only got worse when one source listed Actor Out of Work to "Ian Kibbey and Corey Creasey" and in the same breath credited another St. Vincent video, Marrow to "Terri Timely". Then the Terri Timely website had both videos, and the "about" section was blank, with only a picture of two young men!

        Fortunately the issue has been resolved, and I give you Terri Timely; directing duo Ian Kibbey and Corey Creasey.

        As I sort of mentioned, I happened upon these artists while watching music videos of St. Vincent. Marrow, in particular, is very peculiarly shot, and fits better with the music (both in mood and in the actual rhythm of the filming) than maybe any other music video I've seen. I was immediately pulled in, and had to see more. As it turned out I had seen more of their work already (including the now confirmed to be them video for Actor Out of Work) (which is amazingly bizarre and slightly uncomfortable), and the video for Joanna Newsom's The Sprout and the Bean, which shares with Marrow interesting and fitting camera movements.
        I've been working my way through their online library and what interests me most about their music videos is just what I described about Marrow (my personal fave) and The Sprout and the Bean; a perfect combination of the feel of the music and their own aesthetic, edited to the beat of the music (Modest Mouse's Invisible and Bobby Birdman's I Will Come Again are also good examples). There are also a couple videos that meander and cycle through sets really beautifully. And their compositions are always beautiful.

        Their short films reflect that a lot of the weirdness that occurs in their music videos are not only the product of having chosen somewhat strange musicians, rather that Terri Timely are probably even weirder on their own (this is a good thing). Their sense of a visual beat is also reflected in their short films, which are impeccably timed. Many of the short films are also HILARIOUS (I couldn't even tell you which are my favorites, and I don't want to ruin them for you by saying why anyway). If you're going to watch anything of theirs I'd head to the short films section first, but it's all amazing.

Terri Timely website
2006 interview with the two of them




images: territimely.com (stills from various videos)

The Door (Juanita Wilson, Tim Fleming)

        I've been trying to watch some of the shorts and animations that were nominated for Oscars earlier this month, and one that caught my eye was The Door, which was written and directed by Juanita Wilson. The short, which is just shy of seventeen minutes, is based on the "MONOLOGUE ABOUT A WHOLE LIFE WRITTEN DOWN ON DOORS, the testimony of Nikolai Fomich Kalugin", by Svetlana Alexievich, which follows the attested story of a man in post-Chernobyl Pripyat and Kiev.

        As a college photography student who is interested in abandoned spaces, I have on more than one occasion been shown work by photographers who have gone into Pripyat (Robert Polidori being one). Though the photographs are always hauntingly beautiful and extremely sad, they still lack the full story, only representing the general sense of loss and sadness that is present in many photographs of abandoned (for whatever reason) spaces. They, in my opinion, therefor do not effectively convey the absolute devastation the Chernobyl disaster left behind.
        Pripyat is an intriguing place, I have always been entranced by the present-day photographs of the famous ferris-wheel and the whole post-apocalyptic quiet it exudes. The problem is that the photographs are admittedly romanticized, and looking at them often makes me more interested in exploring than considering the disaster that occurred there (and I won't enter certain abandoned spaces such as mental hospitals out of respect of the horrors people had to endure there, so distracting me from who inhabited the space is not easy). The Door manages to strip the space of this romanticism while maintaining a level of beauty. It makes the personal connection that the photographs lack.

        Every frame of The Door could be a photograph. The filming (director of photography: Tim Fleming) is perfect, as is the color palette. The short opens with an unexplained action, a man stealing a door; and evolves into a story of loss and tradition. Just as nothing about the door is without deeper meaning, the short reveals the way in which nothing after Chernobyl was innocuous.
        A faculty member at my school and well-known artist once told me that "nostalgia is just memory without pain". While I can not fully agree with this statement (particularly in the context in which it was given), watching this film gave me an insight into what she was trying to say. The photographs are beautiful and nostalgic. They show the literal surface of Pripyat. The Door gives a truer (as it is not only based off a testimonial but structured in the same way as a memory) understanding of Pripyat and the memories that are trapped within it. As Toni Morrison would put it, the "rememories".
        The Door may be a short, but in the seventeen minutes they have accomplished everything about a place which other mediums and artists have been trying to capture for years.

The entire film as well as more information are available here.
*be warned that parts of it are not easy to watch, but it is definitely worth it.




images: screenshots from The Door.

iamamiwhoami

        Back for good and for real. I was originally intending to write a post on one of the many artists I've bookmarked over my absence, but because it is currently very late in the evening (or rather early in the morning) and I've been animating all day and have therefore lost my mind, I'll leave you with something a little more cryptic, which I stumbled upon today.

        A YouTube user by the name of "iamamiwhoami", has been periodically posting one-odd minute videos which I can not make heads or tails of, but am absolutely fully drawn to. I'm guessing that the channel belongs to the girl in every video (so I'll refer to the artist as she for now), but I am not claiming to know this as the whole thing is currently some sort of big secret. Quite a few commenters have theories as to who the girl is, but none of them are people that I'm familiar with, so I will not go there. (Her most recent video, posted two weeks ago, which jumps from one to almost five minutes in length, suggests that she is a musician.) This is the video that I first encountered, and is actually my least favorite, although it is still extremely intriguing, a little terrifying, and somehow beautiful.
        The video reminds me of a dream I might have if I had a cold and went to bed with some Sudafed having just watched the scene with the hand-eyed monster in Pan's Labyrinth. Creepy and wonderful. I thought at first that the stretching/bending of some of the shots might bother me (it often reads more as just "effect" than actually adding anything), but I came away less concerned about it and more involved in the general bizarreness of it all (her long eyelashes around hauntingly blue eyes, the strange men looking on), it has some really beautiful moments.
        I was more interested however, in the six shorter uploads, which seem to be pieces to one big puzzle, although they don't fit quite exactly. You'll have to watch them yourselves, as it is difficult to put my finger on what exactly draws me to them, but they are really beautifully filmed, and the editing goes well with the sound/music.
        I'm also really interested in the way the work is being released (in little snippets, and anonymously), and think that it's almost equally as conceptually important as the work itself, but that is a whole other discussion and I am way too exhausted for it. In any case, watch the videos, they're wonderfully bizarre.

iamamiwhoami's youtube channel




images: screen shots of iamamiwhoami's recent videos

Pitchfork's top 50 music videos of the 2000s

        Today marks my 100th post! I actually intended to post this list closer to new years, but it slipped my mind entirely. Pitchfork has tons of staff "top" lists on their site, and of course one that held particular interest to me was the "Top 50 Music Videos of the 2000s". I slowly worked through them from 50 to 1, it's pretty interesting, many of them I hadn't seen or even heard of the artists. (I will warn you, that if you begin to work your way through the list, not to get turned off by the graphicness number 50, which consists of two people having sex with flashing graphics and blocks of color behind them...... I'm hardly prude but even artistically it's worth skipping, the lo-fi thing has been done).
        It's hard not to mention more of these; there were a bunch that I really liked the concept of but the actual video didn't hold my interest, some where I had no idea what I was seeing (in a good way), and a few that were just really cute, but here are some favorites:
#45. The Dead Weather "Treat Me Like Your Mother" (Jonathan Glazer 2009) : This is honestly my favorite video from the list. So simple and SO badass. And of course the end shot is gorgeously sick.
#44. Fever Ray "If I Had a Heart" (Andreas Nilsson 2009) : Bizarre and really eerie. It fits the song perfectly and the filming is absolutely beautiful.
#32. Battles "Atlas" (Tim Saccenti 2007) : Really simple, but a really interesting and new (as far as I know) take on the typical band-in-a-room-performing music video. I also love the hint of sci-fi vibe.
#30 Kanye West ""Can't Tell Me Nothing" [Oldham/Galifianakis version] (Michael Blieden 2007) : Most hilarious thing; Will Oldham (aka musician Bonnie 'Prince' Billy) dancing in the background in bright orange shorts while Zach Galifianakis mouths the lyrics in a totally serious way atop a tractor. Nothing could contrast the song better.
#21. Björk "Wanderlust" (Encyclopedia Pictura 2008) : Björk and stereoscopic 3D. Need I say more?
#10. OK Go "Here It Goes Again" (Trish Sie 2006) : Everyone has seen this. It's just brilliant. And very them.
#9. Fatboy Slim "Weapon of Choice" (Spike Jonze 2001) : Why is this only #9?!


There are quite a few videos that I think deserved to be on the list (Spike Jonze's video for the Yeah, Yeah, Yeah's "Y Control" for example?!??!), and plenty that I would take off, but it's just one opinion by a couple of guys. While they may not be the 50 most artistic music videos of the 2000s, overall they're definitely an interesting look at the last decade's culture and technology.

The full list, with videos embedded



images: Björk "Wanderlust", Kanye West ""Can't Tell Me Nothing" [Oldham/Galifianakis version], The Dead Weather "Treat Me Like Your Mother".

2009 wrap-up

        In case you haven't been following my every move this year, here are my top ten favorite discoveries (all are artists that I had not known of before this year, since I sometimes write about long-time influences of mine):

April 18th : Bianca Casady (knew of her before 2009, but not her artwork)
April 29th : Jan Švankmajer
June 5th : Nadine Byrne
June 7th : Miwa Yanagi
July 24th : Compagnia della Fortezza
July 29th : Andrea Marshall
August 12th : Ali Scarpulla
September 23rd : Bert & Bertie
October 9th : Susanna Majuri
December 21st : Miru Kim




        I realize that the majority of this list is women, and while this did not surprise me (I tend to seek out female artists), I was slightly surprised after a bit of investigation, that the reasoning for this is also partially that the male artists that I've written about this past year are almost entirely artists I had prior knowledge of (and therefor did not include). This coming year I'll try to find some guys who are new to me.

images (top to bottom): Miwa Yanagi, Bert & Bertie, Andrea Marshall & Susanna Majuri

Fantastic Mr. Fox

        Tonight I finally got a chance to see Fantastic Mr. Fox, which I was extremely excited to see, because from the previews the animation looked BEAUTIFUL. And I have to say, it actually exceeded my expectations! Not only was the animation possibly the most well executed that I've seen (and this is saying quite a lot as someone whose favorite form of film is animations), but there are some really beautiful shots (something which is not made evident in the trailer).
        Although the storyline is just barely reminiscent of Dahl's version, the spirit of the book is upheld. The casting was perfect, and the soundtrack (which is comprised largely of banjo) is really fun and fits perfectly.
        All I can really say about the film is that it all came together really well, and I was smiling through literally the entire thing. They have created a perfect balance of something that is easy and fun to watch, and at the same time visually stunning, which I think is really lacking in film right now (but also optimistically on the rise).

I couldn't really find any screenshots that show the feel of the film (and as I stated while the trailer is really good, it does not accurately show just how good the film is), so here's a little taste, but this is one of the few films this year that I truly believe is worth the $10+ to see in theaters, I intend to see it again.

trailer


(director/producer/writer Wes Anderson with a bunch of the stop-motion figures)

Ahmed Abdalla

        This past Thursday I had the pleasure of attending Ahmed Abdalla's opening for his show Melody and Witness, which is currently up at GASP Arts in Brookline, MA. Abdalla's statement for the show reads as follows;

        In melody and witness, there is anxiety about what is happening and what might never happen. There is frustration, sometimes, with the impossibility of communication.
        Humility and arrogance, power and greed, guilt, redemption, forgiveness, ambiguity, paradox and contradiction are all present in this art event."

        This "art event" (described by Abdalla as something that lies between theater and fine art - his background is in both stage design and fine arts) incorporates elements of painting, drawing, sculpture, video projection, sound and light, culminating in a wildly powerful installation. He has effectively controlled every aspect of the experience within the space, and the effect is overwhelming.
        The viewer enters through the street entrance to the gallery, and is immediately confronted by a small space, a temporary wall covered in pencil marks, and a curtain to the left. Entering into the actual gallery, it is dark. The lights are set up to alternate between two overhead bulbs, darkness, and lighting underneath a table that is set up, with a large glass of oil and tar set next to a slab of special type of tar that has the appearance of both wax and charcoal. Small beads (I'm unclear on what they actually were) cover the ground, Abdalla explained that he hoped visitors would step on them and feel that they had done something wrong (something that I certainly felt before having the discussion with him about it). The second smaller room is pitch black, aside from a video projection into a pedestal sink, a man's hands scrubbing to get almost gold brown oil of his hands under running water.
        By nature of the piece, it really must be experienced (and I encourage anyone in the Boston area to do so) to understand the true power of it. Abdalla has extreme mastery over experiential language; his political and emotional message can almost be sensed without explanation or text.

Information on visiting the art event Melody and Witness:

GASP Arts
362-4 Boylston Street
Brookline, MA 02445
617.418.4308

The gallery is open Thursday - Saturday 11am-5pm and is less than two blocks from the Green D line Brookline Hills stop.




images: taken by me, c. Ahmed Abdalla Melody and Witness

Reed + Rader

Back to normal posting from my 2 week hiatus! Midterms are over and I am ready to go.

        And of course I am back with something bizarre and fascinating. I usually try not to post more than four images, but since these were just so amazing, and because I've been gone for two weeks, I possibly went a little overboard. But I'm not apologizing, because as I said, the images are amazing.
        Reed + Rader is made up of fashion (photography/ video/ installation/ graphics) duo Pamela Reed and Matther Rader. What initially attracted me to their work was the strange feel and unconventional look. Two minutes into their website I was hooked.
        I can not tell you much about the artists themselves, other than that they are 26 and live in New York. Their website also states that they "enjoy cats, stuffed animals, nintendo, pizza, robots, deli sandwiches and computing on the internet". I imagine that they are fun to be around. What I can speak to is their work.
        While all of their work is very different, it is all distinctively theirs. Looking through their website, I began to notice that images were moving (a startling discovery at first), sometimes animated very subtly (a blink or breath). While many of their photographs and videos are simply set up to be strange and other-worldly, many of them have also had some sort of outside intervention, whether that be drawing strange sci-fi additions over the photos, collage, photo manipulations, and animation. While I am always excited to see anything different going on in fashion advertisement, their work is particularly interesting because it also speaks to other things, such as technology, medium and contemporary culture. Their work very successfully resides in both the worlds of fashion and art, and comments on both.

I know I always say this, but you really, seriously, need to look at their website. I couldn't post the moving images or their videos here, and there is just so much more on the website that I wish I could've posted. All of it really.

their website -so many amazing things here
their blog meowzas -has a complete list of their other projects and sites (flickr, youtube etc) on the links page






images: reedandrader.com
(last one is a video still)

Beverly Semmes

        Beverly Semmes (a graduate of SMFA) gave a lecture at the MFA yesterday. Her work is often described as, and certainly appears to be, very feminist, so I was surprised and interested to hear that this was not her foremost concern, or even something that she had originally considered. Semmes described how one of her earlier pieces had been written up as a "pool of menstrual blood", and how she had been surprised and embarrassed, thinking that she had simply been making landscapes.
        It is impossible in contextualizing Semmes' work to ignore the feminist connotations of what she has created, intended or not. She works in female garments, placed together with empty vessels (either clay or glass, both of which are made by coiling). In order to understand where Semmes is really coming from though, it is important to look back at where she is stemming from.
        Out of grad school Semmes and her boyfriend (now husband) moved to a psychiatric hospital - where he worked and they were offered free housing. There Semmes became consumed by the hospital's extremely well manicured garden. She began to making garments which reflected the space, and making super-8 films of friends wearing the garments and walking around the garden (second image). It is here that Semmes identity as an artist began to become more apparent. She described the way no one could quite do it the way she wanted. People moved too fast, looked back at the camera, overacted. It was obvious that even if she could not express it at the time, she had a clear intentionality for these pieces. She described it as something like the "marking" or "claiming" of space.
        This continued into her other pieces. By using scale, color, and once even smell, Semmes has a complete control over space. She chooses colors which she describes as both beautiful and nauseating, sometimes with a goal of "color contamination", where nothing is safe from the color, reflecting off of walls, clothes and skin of observers. She plays with this even further in pieces where the garment is the same color as the walls, making it not only difficult to locate but almost claiming the entire room as her art. She ups the scale in every one of her pieces, making dresses that are unwearably huge and with oddly pushed proportions.
        One of her more interesting pieces (in my opinion) was a small room, with orange curtains surrounding it, a couple of red pots, and a large circle of tan bandaids stuck to the floor in the middle of the room. Semmes states that although it cannot be taken too literally (which would leave no place for the pots) she thinks that the bandaids were in some ways standing in for skin, and the curtains one of her dresses. This places the viewer in an undefined space, between skin and fabric, something I thought was really cool, and goes along with her interest in marking or claiming space.
        She showed and discussed work than I can describe here (I unfortunately was unable to find pictures of most of this work, including much of what I was so interested in), but some other things she showed included giant fluorescent yellow "poops" with a guard dressed in the same yellow, a sea of pink fabric (the guard again dressed in the same color, and often chosen to be an older woman), video and images of Semmes watching her feet (an exploration, she says, of the self-absorption involved in being an artist), and a collaboration with a dance studio - something which she again like her early super-8 films, disliked her lack of control over, and ended up making new work in response to this.
        If you ever get an opportunity to see her work, I could not advise more that you do so. It is difficult to find too many images of her work on the web, and that aside her work is of an extremely experiential nature, and I have a feeling that photos only begin to scratch the surface.

Semmes' website
70min conversation lecture with Semmes and Glenn Adamson at the PA ICA




images: various sources including beverlysemmesstudio.com

Karl Baden

        This past Thursday I went to another photographer's lecture at my school with less than high expectations and came away with a fresh view on things.
        I went to the lecture (Boston area photographer Karl Baden) only knowing of Everyday, which he began in 1987, and consists of straight on neutral images of Baden's face, taken once a day for what is coming up on 23 years. (I haven't seen the project in person, and had only seen documentation of it as it was presented in the Howard Yezerski Gallery in 2007 - as small photographs arranged chronologically on three walls of a room). An interesting concept, but I was unsure what made it too different from all the (horrendous) time lapse photo a day nonsense everyone is doing of themselves on youtube these days.
        As it turned out, not only is Baden's body of work much more expansive than this (not a surprise, I was not expecting that this had been his only project) but the different ways Everyday have been presented were also particularly interesting and made a good argument for the ability of photography to be entirely transformed by the way it's presented.
        Baden started the project based on his interest in incremental change, specifically the way that if you look at the pictures one by one in order change is hardly noticeable, but if you look at the first and the last it's entirely in your face. He has made an effort to show the series of photographs differently each time, and the setup has ranged from simply being installed on a wall (such as at the Yezerski Gallery, where they were available individually for sale for I forget, something like $10), to buttons of just his eye for each election year, to all shrunken down to barely thumbnail size and featured on a single piece of paper, to two time lapsed pieces shown together - of the same video length but increasing by different increments of time - one by day and one by month. He has also made a special piece, covering a year in the 1990's when he was diagnosed with and overcame prostate cancer. The piece is a ~15minute time lapse of the year's worth of faces, with audio from conversations with doctors and family members. The piece is a particularly strong look into the effects of cancer, which are so infrequently seen by those who are not personally effected by it. Comparable to Hannah Wilke's self portraits of her deterioration from Lymphoma (a major difference being that she passed away from it, in 1993), Baden's work is particularly strong because you are confronted with extremely personal dialog, while being looked directly in the eye by Baden's thinning face.
        His other and earlier work also displays a heavy interest in time and the ability to occupy more than one space in one time, (or visa versa) as well as a much more humorous edge. He began with street photography and self-portraits while traveling the across US in his twenties, which he then described as "self-images"- because he believed they were not self-reflective, something he now laughs about acknowledging that they couldn't have been more so. The images are both awkward and funny, featuring things such as his open fist around his stubbled chin against a sunset, and employed a great deal of double exposing (all of his great strange work was done pre-photoshop, and usually in camera, though in a later project also by cutting up prints and inserting himself into other photographs). This evolved to using sheets of paper to plan out entire roles of film so that the contact sheet would create a surrealistic mutant composed entirely of Baden's body parts. He also created collages, scratched and burned negatives and used selective toning (later abandoning such projects that were non-replicable, something he believes is an important part of photography). Though much of his work is humorous, he notes that it is always "about photography".
        Other projects he presented included images created by printing pieces of the negatives that are next to one another on the film (something that is done more frequently now, but he did not know of anyone doing at the time, and used to explore the idea of two spaces existing in one time), the documentation of his wife's pregnancy and his daughter's babyhood (culminating in a book with simultaneously humorous and yet very serious pages from his diary at the time), and a project where he inserted himself into pictures that have ended up with particular weight in photo history.
        An all around interesting man... I really liked the way he thinks.

All of the Everyday shots
Baden's Yezerski Gallery page
Boston.com write-up of the 2007 show at the Yezerski Gallery
Covering Photography Baden's web project, "a web-based archive and resource for the study of the relationship between the history of photography and book cover design."




images: various sources, c. Karl Baden

Wolfgang & Christoph Lauenstein, and Tarsem Singh

        Since I mentioned The Fall in my last post, I felt it was an appropriate lead in to twin German animating/producing duo Wolfgang and Christoph Lauenstein, who animated a short sequence in the film. I feel conflicted about talking about this sequence, because it is really important that it be seen as it was intended (within the film), but in talking about the Lauensteins and animation in general it is a very important piece.

        To first quickly talk about The Fall (I'll try not to go on and on though I could); every image has been carefully crafted and beautifully executed, and from what I can understand much of this is credited to the director Tarsem Singh, who was fully dedicated to the film. There is never anything in the frame that was not intended to be in the frame, and everything within the frame is symbolic or integral to the film as a whole. No matter how many times I watch it I am always noticing new things and in constant awe of the raw beauty in the story and the way it has been executed.
        The acting is extremely real, partially because they are very talented and partially because one of the two main characters is played by a six year old girl, and this in many ways informed and changed the actual story (a mistake she makes is written into the script, filming in a hospital is done through holes in the bed-curtains so the intimate environment shared between her and the other main character is truthful, she was only allowed to see certain characters as they appear in the film, etc).

        Everything really comes together, and this in combination with the story make it extremely easy to become emotionally involved. There is a great deal of pain in the film, as well as discussion around the constructions of and ways of dealing with pain. The Lauensteins animated scene comes in at a very important turning point/climax in the film, and the sudden change in media (live-action to stop-motion) is EXTREMELY jarring (as it is intended to be).
        You can watch the scene without "ruining the ending" in any way, or anything like that (I promise), but what you will be losing is contextualization. Contextualization in terms of the way that every object in the sequence is significant, but also contextualization in the way that you will be missing the entire nature of why having this scene in stop-motion is so effective. So really I urge you to just watch the whole movie and look out for it. But if you want to just watch the scene (or have already seen the whole film) you can watch it here. It is the main character, Alexandria's construction of her surgery after falling and hitting her head. The sequence moves seamlessly back into live-action with direct relationship between the fluttering of butterfly wings and Alexandria's eyes blinking rapidly awake.
        The scene is, in the context of the film (and probably without it as well), pretty disturbing, which is to say that the Lauensteins have been extremely effective in creating a scene that both represents the way Alexandria would interpret the events as well as transferring the anxiety she would have felt to the viewer. This was a sort of revelatory moment for me, because though I have seen films with a mix of live-action and stop-motion (Jan Svankmajer's work for example) -it was usually used to briefly animate things that could not otherwise be moving about on their own in the environment of the live-action, and would happen throughout the film. Having just this one scene fully animated, and as a way to show a different perspective, especially that of a child, is just so perfect and so effective in relationship to the rest of the film that it really seemed to place animation on a different plane for me.

        It is also impressive stylistically and technically. The Lauensteins have a very distinctive style, which combines claymation, puppet animation, and computer animation, and the figures seen in The Fall are deeply reminiscent of the figures in their claymation short Balance from 1989, which have appeared in other (mainly advertising) work by the two since then as well. The scene in The Fall is a pretty big departure from their work thematically however, which is usually quite humorous.

        The Lauensteins are a good example of the different ways animation can be used, and the different effects it can have based on its contexts. I again, urge everyone to see The Fall, for this scene as well as the entire film, and also to check out The Lauensteins' site.



images: screen grabs from The Fall c. Wolfgang & Christoph Lauenstein

Bert & Bertie

        I happened across the trailer for The Taxidermist a couple weeks ago. I haven't seen such a beautiful trailer since the trailer for The Fall (which is one of my favorite films, every shot is absolutely astounding and the story is equally amazing).
        I don't even know where to begin, the color scheme is stunning, the shots carefully crafted, and I don't think I have ever seen special effects so effectively used. The storyline and acting appear awkward and yet at the same time beautiful and convincing.
        The Taxidermist is 22 minutes long, and has won "Best Live Action Film (over 15 min)" at the Palm Springs International Short Film Festival, and "Best Cinematography" at the Rhode Island International Film Festival. The film was written and directed by British directorial team Bert & Bertie - about whom I was able to find nothing! Their website is very non-revealing, and only shows a quirky photo of the two, with links to their trailers. Hopefully more information about them will become available soon, as well as this film), which I am dying to see.

The Taxidermist Trailer
Bertie Films Website

        I could not get the trailers on their website to fully load (the link I have provided for The Taxidermist is on youtube), and I could not find the trailer for their other short film, Phobias (8min, which they directed but did not write) anywhere else. It is however available on iTunes for $2. If you're interested in Bert and Bertie I would say it is worth the $2 (I got it myself), the film is simultaneously hilarious and terrifying, and definitely seems to exemplify their style and tone.



images: screen grabs from The Taxidermist Trailer, c. Bert & Bertie

Tim Burton / Tim Walker

        Tim Burton (as is true of so many) has always been one of my favorite illustrators/directors/writers/artists in general. His imagination truly awes me. I'm not going to go into any sort of depth about who he is or what his work is like, because I'm pretty sure that at this point everyone knows, and it would probably just come across as some sort of hero worship.
        So my reason for this post is to say that this past spring I was VERY excited to discover that the Museum of Modern Art (NY) will be giving a retrospective on him. The show opens exactly a month from today (November 22), and will be open through April 26 of 2010. MoMA reports that the retrospective will include "drawings, paintings, storyboards, digital and moving-image formats, puppets and maquettes, props, costumes, ephemera, sketchbooks, and cartoons". The retrospective will be accompanied by a Tim Burton film exhibition (open Nov. 18 and closing with the retrospective).

        The fashion images that I have chosen to accompany this announcement are by Tim Walker and from the October issue of Harper's Bazaar. I'm not entirely sure what Burton's level of involvement was, Bazaar simply says "Tim Burton reimagines the season's dark delights", but the styling (which I will add is EXQUISITE. i want these clothes.) is clearly inspired by him and his work. A few of the stylings are more obvious representations of specific characters, (Edward Scissorhands, Lydia and Delia Deetz) and one is an actual costume representation of one a character from one of his poems. Tim Burton himself is featured in two of the photographs, and the spread is, of course, in anticipation of his upcoming retrospective. (The photographs are actually very beautifully done, I would recommend looking at them all, there are thirteen).

        Anyway, I'm sure I will see this show multiple times, and I encourage anyone who can get to New York to check it out. It's sure to be inspiring and you have plenty of time!

Tim Burton MoMA retrospective page
Tim Burton MoMA film exhibition page
the full Harper's Bazaar spread




images: harpersbazaar.com & moma.org