Sound familiar?

What about this?

Or is this a stretch?

…so did creaky boards copy Joe satriani?

The Oak Street Cinema is doing a retrospective on filmmaker Jean Luc Godard.

He was one of the founding members of the Nouvelle Vague, or “French New Wave.” According to wikipedia, many of his films challenged the conventions of Hollywood Cinema, and he was often considered the “most extreme New Wave filmmaker.” His films often expressed his political ideologies as well as his knowledge of film history. In addition, his films often cited existential and Marxist philosophy.

CONTEMPT- Fri Oct 10 – Sun Oct 12 @ 7 & 915pm w/ Sat and Sun Matinees @ 5p

BAND OF OUTSIDERS- Mon. Oct 13 – Tues Oct 14 nightly @ 7 & 9pm

TWO OR THREE THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER- Wed Oct 15 – Thurs Oct 16 nightly @ 7 & 9pm

PIERROT LE FOU- Wed Oct 22 – Thurs Oct 23 nightly @ 7 & 9pm

I’m really excited to check out his films, I had fun reading up about french new wave and iconoclasm, so I’m pretty intruiged.

Woah, photos

So tonight I saw Deerhoof at first ave. Pretty awesome to say the least. What really impressed me however, was one of the opening bands that performed. AU was really frickin awesome.

These two guys come up on stage, one of them has long straggly kinda hair, and they both look pretty down to earth. They plop themselves down at the respective keyboard and drumset. The first song is interesting, the synth is set up to sound like a genuine grand piano. The music is okay. As the first song fades out, there is a smattering of applause. The second song begins slowly, but builds up layer upon layer, not in an overpowering way though. The drums are amazing, and the remainder of their set builds up to one epic finale- a song called “death.” This song integrates so many moods and emotions that it’s pretty hard to describe. The calm beginning is overpowered by a neverending, but amazing drum solo, which ends with both guys standing up and pounding on their instruments with seemingly all the energy left in their bodies. A final thud of the drums, and we all begin to applaud. False alarm. The song has a few trick endings, and seems to end on a more monumental scale each time. The guys clearly have fun, they integrate awesome bells, and the drum solo seemed to even impress the keyboardist. He tried to butt in with his synth a few times, before shaking his head ruefully as another cymbal crash interrupted him. I decided that these guys are going to play at my wedding. 

Deerhoof was awesome too of course. I love singer Satomi Matsuzaki’s adorable hand gestures as she sings,

and the music got everyone (even utterly sleep deprived me) to get at least their feet tapping.
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Although I’m trying to cut back on the unhealthy amount of time I spend on the internet, I thought I’d introduce a few websites I visit every day (or pretty often) If you’re ever looking for some fun sites to kill time on check these out.

Okay, hopefully everyone knows about Pandora by now. As a radio DJ hopeful this site is really fun for finding new music that match your tastes. You can basically create your own radio stations based on the artists you enter in the search box. I’ve got about 5 different stations I listen to depending on my mood. You can only skip something like 5 songs an hour I think- but it’s better than real radio where songs you hate are guaranteed to be played. You can always give a thumbs up or down to a song and they’ll try not to play anything like it again. Pretty swell. Pandora Radio.

Daytrotter is my new favorite music website. They basically have bands come in and play exclusive, re-worked, alternate versions of old songs and unreleased tracks. Lots of pretty well known bands are on the site, and it’s a great place to find new music as well. (Free downloading..) They’ve got a team of writers and illustrators to interview/draw the artists too. Daytrotter.

Maybe flickr only entertains me as a lover of photography, but it’s always cool to browse people’s photographs and see the range of talent. I’m on there too. The other really cool photo website is JPG mag where people submit and vote on each others photos to get published in a real live photo magazine! I should really submit something..

If you’re ever having a bad day it might make you feel better to visit Fmylife, where people submit little 1-2 sentence stories about a really terrible experience they’ve had. You might not want to read some of them while you’re eating though. You can agree/disagree as to whether the person’s life is indeed f-ed, or whether they deserved what they got.

Hulu is a great place to watch really funny SNL clips and catch up on any TV shows you may have missed. Really high quality videos, and limited commercial interruption! If I’m bored I also like to watch movie trailers on apple.

One of the most hilarious websites out there is definitely the best of craigslist. Simply because you realize how many witty/cynical/sardonic/pissed off people there are in the world who are willing to rant their hearts out to cyberspace…and how many idiots there are out there. My favorite has to be the guy who put up photos of a “cat” he found to find the owner. The creature is clearly an opossum. Wow.

Now for the sites I occasionally remember to visit. For awhile I was really into thefatmanwalking.com which documented this dude Steve’s journey across America to lose weight and regain his old life. He’s amazingly insightful and I still check up on how he’s doing every now and then. Postsecret is a website where people send in artistic postcards that reveal one of their secrets anonymously. New secrets are posted every sunday, and there are a few books out. Many of the funniest bumper stickers on facebook actually originate from someecards a site with tons of hilarious ecards for any occasion. 

This is all I could think of for now, but maybe there’ll be a second time-wasting blog up soon..

Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests were filmed from early 1964 – November 1966. Subjects would be seated in front of a tripod mounted camera, asked to be as still as possible, and told not to blink while the camera was running. There are a number of Screen Tests that diverge from this format entirely, the sitter purposely moving, gesticulating, or using props. Subjects were lit and filmed by Warhol’s stationary 16mm Bolex camera on silent, black and white, 100-foot rolls of film. Each Screen Test is exactly the same length, lasting only as long as the roll of film. The film is shot at 16 fps and projected at 24 fps The films, projected in slow motion, last four minutes each. More than 500 Screen Tests were made. The subejcts of these screen tests were who Warhol considered some of the up and coming stars of their time. They include Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Edie Sedwick and Alan Ginsberg.

So recently Evan introduced me to the work of photographer Clayton Hauck.

“If you live in Chicago and have a Myspace or Facebook account, you’ve most likely seen the work of Clayton Hauck. The 25-year-old immortalizes Chicago’s youthful nightlife scene, capturing candid moments of ecstatic DJ bliss, awkward drunken posing, superstar DJs and wannabe celebrities for his photo blog everyoneisfamous.com”
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