The Daily Rumpus
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From Stephen Elliott
Last week for my Hugo House class on using experimental films as writing prompts we spent 88 glorious minutes with House, the 1977 Japanese haunted pajama party freak-out directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi. This week we puzzled ourselves with three stop-motion animated shorts.
...moreYesterday I had the pleasure of interviewing Guy Maddin, the great Canadian auteur and subject of previous Eyeball posts. We spoke for about an hour and a half; he was so generous and real that I ended up just wanting to be his friend forever.
...moreI held out for just the right time to watch Guy Maddin’s Brand Upon the Brain! and caved this weekend, experiencing it like I do so many movies now, on my laptop with a couple earbud headphones. Friends, this is the absolute wrong way to experience this film.
...moreRumpus blogger Rick Moody posted a comment to my recent post about Lord of the Rings asking whether the special effects of that film still held up. I got to thinking about why we accept some special effects as cool even when we can tell they’re fake while we turn up our noses at other special effects.
...moreHey tweens who enjoy a little abstinence-only subtext thrown in with your vampire movies: go out and get a load of the non-virginal variety in Guy Maddin’s Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary. This was one of the Maddin movies I’ve been saving.
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My Winnipeg, Guy Maddin’s ‘docu-fantasia’ film about Winnipeg, Manitoba, should be out on DVD soon. Apparently there’s a book in the works as well. If you don’t know Maddin’s work, it might be described as Canadian ice cream noir, blending outrageous narrative stunts with antique cinematic effects designed to make his films look like they were produced in the Silent era.