NickCave - Straight To You - documentary

Spanning Nick Caves career from Birthday Party to 1993. First authorized Nick Cave documentary. Broadcasted on TV stations in various countries (Germany, Australia, Israel, Switzerland, Austria, Italy).

Vampyr (1932)

 

Vampyr (German: Vampyr – Der Traum des Allan Gray, lit. 'Vampyr: The Dream of Allan Gray') is a 1932 gothic horror film directed by Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer. The film was written by Dreyer and Christen Jul based on elements from J. Sheridan Le Fanu's 1872 collection of supernatural stories In a Glass Darkly. Vampyr was funded by Nicolas de Gunzburg who starred in the film under the name of Julian West among a mostly non-professional cast. Gunzburg plays the role of Allan Gray, a student of the occult who enters the village of Courtempierre, which is under the curse of a vampire.

Vampyr was challenging for Dreyer to make as it was his first sound film and was required to be recorded in three languages. To overcome this, very little dialogue was used in the film and much of the story is told with title cards like a silent film. The film was shot entirely on location and to enhance the atmospheric content, Dreyer opted for a washed out, soft focus photographic technique. The soundtrack was created in Berlin where the characters’ voices, sound effects, and score were recorded.

Vampyr had a delayed release in Germany and opened to a generally negative reception from audiences and critics. Dreyer edited the film after its German premiere and it opened to more mixed opinions at its French debut. The film was long considered a low point in Dreyer's career, but modern critical reception to the film has become much more favorable with critics praising the film's disorienting visual effects and atmosphere.

Sassy the Sasquatch

Sassy the Sasquatch, commonly known as just 'Sassy' is the deuteragonist in The Big Lez Show, a minor character in both the spin-off/prequel miniseries The Mike Nolan Show and the Mike Nolan’s Long Weekend and the titular main protagonist in the spin-off series, Sassy the Sasquatch. He is Lez's best friend and next door neighbour. Sassy lives and hangs out with a group of three other Sasquatches - Donny, Wayno, and Scruffy - as well as Owlanox and reside in a run down house next door to Lez.

One of Sassy's defining character traits is his ability to take excessive amounts of drugs without being injured or dying as a result. He is shown as being constantly high, whilst accusing other characters around him for being 'druggos' in the meantime.

Sometime after parting ways with Scruffy, Sassy is walking aimlessly around Antarctica watching the auroras, when suddenly a giant orb of light (which he encountered and involuntarily ate earlier in the show) erupts out of him and consumes him. He arrives in another dimension. After figuring out how to break free from this place, by using his imagination, he meets his Higher Self, who explains what he and his purpose are.

His Higher Self explains that he keeps erasing his memories and reliving his past. Confused at which past he's reliving, Higher Sassy shows Sassy all the experiences he forgot, including the universe in which The Big Lez Show occurred. After quickly (in our perspective) reliving through the events of The Big Lez Show, Sassy remarks how sad he feels about Lez's death. Higher Sassy is struck with the idea to send Sassy into the Jez universe, so he can have some closure and leave with the knowledge that Big Lez is alive and living his best life in another dimension. Returning with some proper closure and satisfaction with Lez's story, Sassy returns to his Higher Self. After Higher Sassy asks Sassy what he wants to do now, Sassy's last request is to relive the story once more. Higher Sassy is surprised but obliges, allowing Sassy to return to Earth in the year 1991, in a forest beside Nigel's ranch outside of Brown Town. After arriving, Sassy uses his interdimensional portals to retrieve Owly, Wayno, Scruffy, and Donny from their respective timelines. The five of them return to Nigel's property through the portal. The sight of this understandably freaks Nigel the fuck out who requests them to go back to wherever they came from. However Sassy's portal seems to break down, preventing them from leaving. With the five of them arriving on Earth in 1991, so begins their lives in Brown Town, which many years later, leads to the events of the entire Big Lez Show.

As his Higher Self reveals, Sassy is an interdimensional time traveler, or 'observer'. Sassy was splintered from his higher self (which is a sort of deity) for the purpose of exploring the multiverse, collecting memories and experiences, with which to ultimately return to his Higher Self to learn more about the multiverse. However after living through the events of The Big Lez Show, Sassy misses Lez after his death, and wishes to relive the story again. Sitting at the fire, after recounting the story to Nigel, Sassy eats his "magic jelly bean" which erases all his memories (and gives him a bit of a buzz), after which all he wants is to see a dinosaur. Right after this the aforementioned grey aliens arrive out of an interdimensional portal. Seeing this as his opportunity to see a dinosaur, he barges into the spacecraft and starts pressing buttons and generally fucking around with the alien tech. Obviously pissed off by this, the four aliens handcuff him and oblige to take him back to dinosaur times. They drop him off in handcuffs on Earth on the day of the KT mass extinction event 66 million years ago, completing the cycle which the series started off at.

It's unknown how long Sassy spent reliving this cycle of experiencing and forgetting, but he definitely did it a fuck-ton of times. Eventually however, after god knows how many cycles, Sassy makes the ultimate decision to cast his magic jelly bean into the campfire, finally breaking the cycle and allowing Sassy to live on to see and experience new things. After this he presumably returns to and becomes one with his Higher Self again, though it's never explicitly shown in the show.

BE PEACE

"D.I.Y. or Die How to Survive as an Independent Artist"

 

D.I.Y. or Die: How to Survive as an Independent Artist is a low-budget documentary film released by Music Video Distributors in 2002. The film is a "celebration of the underdog" and deals with why artists do what they do, regardless of the lack of a continuous paycheck.

The film features some artists that define the DIY ethic and speaks to the overall DIY culture. It features interviews with Steve Albini, Lydia Lunch, Ian MacKaye, J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr, Jim Rose, J. G. Thirlwell of Foetus, Mike Watt, Eric McFadden, Richard Kern (filmmaker), Ron Asheton of The Stooges, Madigan Shive of Bonfire Madigan, Lynn Breedlove of Tribe 8 and Dave Brockie of Gwar, among others.

Alicia Dattner appears in the credit sequence as a punk street artist stapling DIY flyers. Original artwork for the credits drawn by Attaboy, co-founder of Hi-Fructose Contemporary Art Magazine.

The DVD was released (under the title "D.I.Y. or Die: Burn This DVD") with no region restrictions or copy protection. Director Michael W. Dean allowed and even encouraged people to make copies for non-commercial use.

With Out Walls "Jean-Michel Basquiat"

WITHOUT Walls: Shooting Star (1990 Channel 4) chronicles the rapid rise and tragic fall of artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Ten years ago he was an anonymous teenage graffiti artist. By 1985 he was one of the most celebrated painters of his generation selling work at $30000 a canvas. Today his paintings change hands for millions of dollars each. But Basquiat cannot reap the rich rewards of his success. He died from an heroin overdose in 1988 the victim of a £l000-a-day habit funded by his success as an artist. New Yorker Basquiat was one of the most successful black artists ever but throughout his short life he complained bitterly that he and his work were never taken seriously enough. He became a close friend of Andy Warhol and was rumoured to be Madonna's lover. But beneath the glittering surface he was a serious artist who spoke for the victims of the destructive power of racism.