April Fish!

The joke was on me when I tried to move this blog to Wordpress today. Ultimately, as you can tell, the blog formerly known as Uncontained and Immortal ended up right back where it was, with this devil I know that is Blogger.

Villain of the Day: Kenneth Anger

Today also brought my first experience with the films of Kenneth Anger. Fireworks was intriguing (and a good tutorial on how to make erotic films using only things found in your parents' basement), and I really liked Puce Moment without being able to tell you exactly why. I couldn't care less about Eaux d'artifice, but I suspect that has mostly to do with my dislike of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, the Winter movement of which is used as the soundtrack for that film. Despite high praise for it by critics, druggies, and Michael, whose taste for weird movies and music usually jives with mine, and who encouraged me to experience Anger's work in the first place, I felt like I could take or leave Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome. I think it was just too long for what it was - too long to hold my attention, though I didn't necessarily dislike it. Lastly, and most importantly, I absolutely loved Rabbit's Moon.

If you enjoy commedia dell'arte and Harlequinade type things, especially strange twists on them like you'd find in Lisa Snellings-Clark's artwork* and Neil Gaiman's Harlequin Valentine**, odds are you'll dig this, too. Pierrot, Harlequin, and Columbine are all there, in this pretty little film that I wish I could set to continuous play and hang on the wall so I could visit it throughout the day.



The video quality there isn't very good, but I thought I'd share it here so you can get some of the experience. I'm told that the later version (which I'll see when Netflix sends me vol. 2 of Anger's films) is "differenter" for the changes made to the soundtrack. If you like it, I highly suggest begging, borrowing, or buying a copy of the collected films on DVD.

Let me know what you think!


*Incidentally, I love her work, and have a couple of tiny pieces adorning my writing-space. Also, my birthday is coming up. I leave it up to you to work out if those statements are related.

**Following that link takes you to the Last.fm page where you can listen to the author read the story in its entirety.