Man of the Year Ned Hurley has an ongoing project called Friendfilms. He takes a track from the Residents’ Commercial Album (which consists of 40 one-minute “jingles”) and makes a music video of it, co-produced by and starring a friend. Thus marks the second Hurlbrook production, a one-minute video for “Give it to Someone Else.” Enjoy.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that last Friday marked the final strip of John Allison’s amazing comic, Scary Go Round. However, I must stress, John Allison is still making comics. If you ever looked at Scary Go Round’s archives and thought, “Boy that’s a lot of content to get through, and I really won’t be able to understand the current strips without reading the archive,” then now is the time to read Bad Machinery! Apparently, for early fans, there is some continuation from Scary Go Round into Bad Machinery, but Allison’s goal was also to make his work accessible again. This strip just started. There are no archives. There is no back material to read to understand what’s happening. And it’s awesome. Read it!
And if you’ve ever got the time to devote, the Scary Go Round archives are still there. And they’re not going anywhere. Since they’re no longer growing, you can tackle them at any time and any pace you wish, so if you’re at all inclined to you should still read all of that too.
Scary Go Round is dead! Long live Bad Machinery!
R.I.P.
I have just been called: “The Jesus Of Candy.”
Last night, instead of working on homework like I should have, I went to an early (and free!) screening of The Informant! I don’t know why The AV Club was giving out free passes… but being a Soderbergh fan and also being incredibly excited about the cast (Matt Damon, Joel McHale, Tony Hale) I jumped right on that.
The movie follows Mark Whitacre (played by Damon) as he seemingly rats out ADM for price-fixing. Things quickly get out of hand, however, when he begins to fancy himself as some sort of secret agent and tries to play the FBI and ADM against each other, wearing a wire, stealing money, and lying across the board.
The movie went from hilarious to frustratingly hilarious and back to hilarious, which is surprising and more than a little transcendent seeing as how a good deal of its dramatic tension is drawn from the intricacies of high-fructose corn syrup production and the perils of a bottle of soda costing five cents extra.
Soderbergh’s timing is perfect, his cinematography keeps the film constantly interesting (even while the countless performances already give it two legs to stand on), and the script is airtight. Which brings me to the cast.
While I was aware of a good deal of the talent involved in The Informant! I was constantly surprised by familiar, gifted faces. The Informant! is unique in that it is a film that requires serious and straightforward performances from the entire cast, yet Soderbergh has chosen to populate it with comedians. So while they are not falling over or mugging for the camera, or even playing their parts up for comedic effect, their talents ramp up the considerable energy of the feature. Scott Adsit, Patton Oswalt, Andrew Daly, and both Smothers Brothers (that’s right! Dick and Tom!) show up throughout the movie.
Last but certainly not least, The Informant! features an incredibly schmaltzy, sophisticated score. I’ve never been more excited to go out and buy a soundtrack as I am right now.
Anyways, I would highly recommend going to see The Informant! It comes out on Friday. I am not being paid to say this, it was just really great I swear.
Well, this year I unwittingly got involved in student government. SAC is the Student Advisory Council at MCAD. Every semester MCAD has $5,000 to spend on student-run activities: clubs, field trips, etc. A student from each department (fine arts, media arts, graphic design, graduate studies, bachelor of science/advertising) is elected to simultaneously represent that department and run bi-monthly meetings open to the entire student body where people can come with proposals to try and get part of that money to use for something. I am the new Media Arts representative.
It’s going OK so far. We took pictures, and someone suggested we pose like cheesy high-school portraits. And thus:
The sun was in my eyes, OK?
Because of malfunctioning sensors, I now get a wave of paranoia every single time I enter and exit the MCAD library.
Countless scenarios fly through my head, wherein I am accused of trying to steal a book, thoroughly searched, and never really trusted again. And the sensor’s going off is so inexplicable that I myself start to believe I was trying to steal things from the library. It was such a subconscious urge, an uncontrollable kleptomania that I did it without realizing, which would mean that no matter how hard I try, deep down in my core I am such a bad person that it is out of my control.
But instead the librarian just says, “Don’t worry about it,” and waves me through.
Time has been occupied with severe classwork, music-listening, movie-watching, and a little bit of Bad Day On The Midway.
Bad Day On The Midway is a CD-ROM game created and designed by The Residents. It chronicles, as the title suggests, a very unfortunate day on a carnival midway. You move from character to character, trying to uncover the midway’s secrets, and also trying to avoid the myriad ways to die (a serial killer, a plague, slipperiness, suicide, taxes). I have no idea how one might get their hands on it, but if you can, you should, because it’s amazing.
And here is an in-camera thing I had to do for editing class.
