SUBWAY:
France 1985

Luc Besson's masterpiece set in the seedy Parisian Metro.     Crime, Revenge and a sexy love story.       Starring the enigmatic, cooler than skool  Chirstopher Lambert.


I think this was Christopher Lambert's first film, if not, it put him on the map.     Unfortunately he went on to do Highlander, Greystroke and ended up in action star oblivion, but he was the coolest-bluest hero here.

Subway also stars, Isabelle Adjani, Jean Reno and the French star Richard Bohringer (diva).    COOL and blue.









One of my favorite American films around this time was MANHUNTER.    Michael Mann's masterpiece that really started William Petersen's career.    (CSI)   When he finally showed up 20 years later on CSI, I thought to myself its about fucking time. He was so great in this.      Truly one of the best serial killer movies ever.     When the song,  In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida by Iron Butterfly comes on in a murder scene where he rips a girls eyes out- you just want to scream.   Highly recommend.    

Michael Mann stuck with that visual color(blue) for a long time and it came to define many of his films.      Check out Heat with Deniro.   Also for you TV fans. The old Miami Vice episodes.    


I like to reference a lot of films from this period for my own work, the stylized color, moody lighting, and saturated feel  are pretty compelling.   I love anything about serial killers.     Im working on a project with non fictional references set in southern Florida so these films and the early Miami Vice episodes are a good visual reference.    All this makes me want to run out and shoot some tungsten film- oh yeah, I guess you can do it nowadays with photoshop-God I love computers.
   


 
 
 

Those moody words to Love will tear us apart were the soundtrack to anyone who came of age in the late 1970's early 80's.   Joy Division, Echo and the Bunnymen, Bauhaus, The Fall.    IT was all so creative, dark and sophisticated that period in music.The brilliant photographer Anton Corbijn made this movie last year to tell the story of the amazing, talented, tragic musician Ian Curtis of the groundbreaking post punk band Joy Division.      It was a very rich period in music history.    Makes you realize what inspired him to write the songs that were sung by that generation of young  people wearing black.    She's lost Control is about an epileptic woman Ian knew in his state social worker job.   He was also an epileptic who suffered from depression and bi polar disorder.
RIght after the Sex Pistols, Joy Division was the first band to come out of the post punk movement.   More moody, insular and melancholy Other bands like the Buzzcocks, Gang of Four, and the Fall were also part of the group.    Many of these bands were in the Manchester seen.    The fashion was paired down on a blue collar tip.  Black, distraught, volatile and fractured.   Non of the flashy splash of punk style.  These post punk bands were way more musical and intellectual than their punk rock forefathers.Control website  Samantha Morton and new comer Sam Riley are spectacular.   You will cry.





































The director Anton Corbijn Corbijn site has been a celebrated photographer for 20 years.   He shot almost all U2's imagery, has directed music videos and collaborated with many cool musicians and artists.     The film's cinematography is flawless.     Impeccable.   Please rent it.  

Blue hoo:    80's livin in the 80's

I recently revisited some of my favorite 80's films and was inspired to write this post.  
I call this the Blue period.      Diva, Betty Blue and Subway.     All made in the early 80's.    

DIVA was directed by French genius filmmaker Jean-Jacques Beniex.   The film was based on a novel written by Daniel Odier.

This thriller about two Parisian mobsters, an opera singer and her fan, and a very stylish Richard Bohringer who saves the day is really as contemporary today as it was visionary then.    The teenage girl in the see thru pink raincoat on roller skates reminds me of something John Galliano would think up.

The evil killer in sunglasses and an earpiece is as weird and terrifying as Javier Bardem in No Country.     If you have never seen it, get it on Netflix and if you have ,watch it again.  This is beautiful,powerful filmmaking.   Awesome.

The amazing art star Matthew Barney presented his installation and performance for Ren last night in Norwalk Ca.   It all started as viewers got into their cars and drove to Norwalk to experience something close to a rock opera .     400 lucky viewers were invited to view the spectacle.    Barney took over an abandoned RV dealership and converted the space into REN Chrysler.    All the cars were rented, all the stickers custom, the license plates, actors, marching band, mariachis and laborers cast locally to contribute to the production.    A cameraman told me they had been filming the set for 3 days prior to the performance.    18 hi def cameras were on set shooting.   Barney stood quietly on the sidelines and watched as his two hour performance took place.    At one point the destruction within the building with fire, fluids flying and a wrecking ball shattered part of the building and glass cut a few spectaters which added to the tension of the performance.





















































In attendance were Spiderman actor and art lover James Franco, literary beauty Sophie Dahl, designer Jeremy Scott, artists Catherine Opie, Agathe Snow and hundreds of art lovers.    In case you can't tell, thats a Chrysler Imperial with a giant porta potty welded into the trunk followed by a giant septic tank shaped as a globe filled with the nastiest blue septic fluid.





Neville Wakefield article on Matthew in FRIEZE

Matthew is an artist who works in film, video, installations, sculpture and drawing.   He is, in my opinion one of the most innovative artists of the 21s century.    The film series The Cremaster Cycle is Barney's best-known work. The films had very high budgets by experimental art film standards, and featured such varied celebrities as Norman Mailer, Ursula Andress, and Richard Serra.

In 2006, he released Drawing Restraint 9, a collaboration with his partner Björk, who plays the female of the two central roles in the film, and contributed the music for the soundtrack.

In interviews, Barney has mentioned the phenomenon of hypertrophy as a metaphorical inspiration for much of his work; several of his performance pieces have involved Barney restrained or somehow encumbered while attempting to execute a drawing. The performance aspects of Barney's work have been described as predominant, while the resultant drawings have been called "[not] very interesting in their own right." Some have criticized Drawing Restraint 9 for what has been termed a superficial treatment of Japanese culture combined with an undesirable awkwardness in the actors/performers, including Barney.^[4] A gallery show accompanying the Drawing Restraint 9 project appeared at Gladstone Gallery in New York, April 7-May 13, 2006, featuring thermoplastic sculptures associated with the film and the remains of a private project performed at the gallery April 2, 2006, titled Drawing Restraint 13: The Instrument of Surrender, for which Barney emerged from a crate dressed as General Douglas MacArthur, walked across a platform, and fell into a vat of petroleum jelly. Barney reused his motif of dressing as MacArthur in a show later that year (June 23 through September 17, 2006) at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. That performance involved Barney scaling the museum's atrium to execute a large sketch of his iconic pill-shaped symbol--another recurring motif in his work. (source wikipedia)

One of my favorite Al Pacino movies CRUISING (1980) just came out on DVD.   The cult hit was written and directed by the amazing William Friedkin (French Connection, the Exorcist).    This movie was groundbreaking for many reasons.   It was the first time an award winning director brought a gritty sub culture to the big screen with a major movie star in the starring role.   Cruising was based on a fictional series of serial killer S&M murders that haunted the gay leather scene in New York during the 1970's.   *There is also a book out on fashions during that period, more about that later.

The incredible punk soundtrack by Jack Nietzsche  (no relation to the philosopher) enlisted GERMS frontman Darby Crash to write lyrics.   Lionshare was the Germs song.   More songs were in the can but Darby OD'd that year.    For more on Darby Crash read LEXICON DEVIL-one of the best books about LA punk culture.   by Brendan Mullen