puppet films that aren't muppet films

last night i watched "the happytime murders." it came out in 2018. i remember briefly hearing about it but mostly because it was one of the many many melissa mccarthy movies that were coming out around that time.

it's a puppet movie. the premise is simple. a world where puppets and humans coexist, but it's given an x-men treatment: puppets are considered second-class citizens and are displayed as openly and voraciously mocked by the humans ("Fleshies," in puppet parlance). and part of its "heart," by which i mean m.o., seems to be the hollywood's favorite back-pocket Social Justice (TM) play-card, the way the puppets are treated is Of Course (in the meta-realms) a commentary on Race Relations. at one point melissa mccarthy literally calls someone racist for teasing her puppet partner. oh and by the way, although the film is rude&crude and did feature what i thought were some clever jokes about "what if"s, there's a puppet porn industry, there's sexual jokes galore about male puppet ejaculate amounting to silly string and lady puppet ejaculate being purple glitter, which by the way, in the film it's not heroin that people get hooked to, it's sugar. as in sugar smacks, which is purple lines of glitter to be snorted through a Twizzlers stick shoved up the nostril, as in smack. yeah it made me laugh while i was watching it, but the morning after i thought, every joke was kind of the first thing that you'd think of if you were going to imagine how fucked up you could write a puppet/human coexistence story. got sidetracked - so although it got a few laughs out of me and i thought it was sort of clever, it's also copaganda (thanks @kappys_korner for intro'ing me to that one). the real star of the show is not even exactly mccarthy, it's a Private Detective, an ex-cop(detective), like they often are, named.... shit, i can't even remember. but one of the other thrusts of the film is that, this puppet and mccarthy used to be partners. the puppet accidentally shot another puppet years and years ago while on the "force," and he was fired, and subsequently the Puppet Code was put into place, which barred any other puppet from ever being a cop. the emotional climax of the film is that, mr puppet, after joining forces with mccarthy to avenge the death of his brother and a bunch of other puppets, does a Real Swell Job, and ends up back on the force, and also the Puppet Code is repealed, so now puppets can be cops. in case you missed it, hollywood's allegory extends here - hey, why not be a Black cop. yeah go for it! "You can protect your own." booooorrriiiinnnngggg and copaganda. but anyway, i digress.

googling this morning to find a picture to represent the film, which i decided not to do, apparently many people felt the need to write blogs about, you'll know what i mean: "before there was the happytime murders.... there was.... MEET THE FEEBLES." ad copy, in other words, that function solely to elevate the name of this hollywood film in the public consciousness by riding off the coattails of the work of an actual outsider and independent artist (at the time, remember this is 1989, WAY before lord of the rings), Peter Jackson. always mining the past, hollywood, come on now. because meet the feebles is such a better film. so to use it to promote an inferior film feels so heinous and disrespectful to both Peter Jackson, and My Intelligence.

i first heard of and saw Meet the Feebles at the Red Vic Theatre on Haight Street. R.I.P.  it was about 10 years ago. i was on a 3rd date with my first real girlfriend, a starbucks barista who i met at starbucks, and only dated for about Two weeks. (our first date was me seeing her in a production of the vagina monologues at city college.) (2nd date was my first time at the Elbo Room. also R.I.P.  man, ever notice how things disappear in san francisco so much. huh, maybe it's all these techies? call me carazy.) we watched a lot of good films together but weren't meant to be together forever, or for Three weeks even. we also saw "Drive Angry" in theatre, which I still think is one of nicolas cage's notable roles. and has one of the "best" slow-mo scenes in an action film. nicolas cage is drinking a bottle of jack daniels while fucking hookers while bullet-time shooting like 5 angry rednecks trying to drag him back to hell, or something, while the camera swings around the room. i think it's genius. anyway. i should write about nicolas cage. i mean 3 of the best films, he has starred in. (not gonna count drive angry as a great film, but it is great.) "Wild At Heart," directed by David Lynch, "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call, New Orleans," directed by Werner Herzog, and "Mandy," directed by Panos Cosmatos (son of George Cosmatos, director of such films as "Rambo First Blood Part 2," "Cobra" [also starring Stallone], "Leviathan" [featuring a score by Jerry Goldsmith that one time Spencer Clark of the Skaters, and aka Monopoly Child Star Searchers, and runner of Pacific City Sound Visions record label, told me he would accept a copy of the LP soundtrack  as payment in exchange for a bunch of his cassette tapes], and "Tombstone"),  and it's just as good as Jodorowsky and features a scene straight out of Prison Pit (see also: "Superjail!") involving alien monsters having sex, as well as the best drug scene in modern cinema, and did i mention that Nic Cage plays a lumberjack who at one point wields a 6-foot chainsaw to interrupt the alien mid-coitus for a battle to the death? i mean, nicolas cage is amazing. i will never, EVER, understand people who think he is overrated or deserves to be mocked. i will only speak to the converted on this matter, and i think we are all the better for that, case closed. next time I'll tell you all the reasons Keanu Reeves is a legend. but there are still so many great nic cage movies i haven't even mentioned.

anyway, where were we. meet the feebles. it's great. 

in the pantheon of great puppet movies that do not feature muppets (btw: the muppets are legendary and deservedly so, and i think every thing muppet is a masterpiece, do not get me wrong on this one), there are other notables. obviously there's "team america: world police," from the south parkers trey parker and matt stone, who i will always respect for a., creating south park, and b., taking acid before hitting the red carpet to promote "south park: bigger longer & uncut" at the oscars (for their "blame canada" nomination).

of the things that you can watch, there's not too much else that i am personally aware of, as far as puppets are concerned. the only other things i had in mind when i started this post were "the dark crystal" (which is an absolute standout tripping-on-acid viewing) and to a lesser extent, more of an honorable mention really, "superstar: the karen carpenter story."

also: i guess there's 4.5 (uh i mean 6) types of puppets, ranked and listed here in order of complexity -

• finger puppets - one level of movement
  
• hand puppets - 3 degrees of movement - which will have a movable mouth and two arms / appendages, operated the same way you would make a Wolf shadow puppet, where your two middle fingers and thumb represent the mouth, while pointer and pinky operate appendages.
• marionettes, which feature between 4 and 8 moving parts (an upgrade from hand puppets)
• shadow puppets (one magnitudinal order of complexity above marions as far as Visual Thinking os concerned)
• ventriloquism (the logical conclusion of human stand-ins, as this is FULL MERGER)
• the reptilian race (this is the illogical conclusion of complete submission to our new overlords)

(shadow and venti each count for 0.75)

it'd be nice if i had a full catalog of cultural objects to draw from that left at least 3 items under each category, but then we're talking 18, and i've got barely a fraction of that to go off of at the present moment.

there are of course great examples of shadow puppets if you look into indonesian shadow play, and maybe some filmmakers have approached that; i'm only familiar with the films of Apichatpong Weerasethakul (uncle boonmee, whom i'm sure is a reference to all this) - > i'm sure there's *plenty* yet to discover. 

i will surely revisit this later, in either weeks months or years, but that's today's missive.

thanks for reading, take care of yourselves. 

✌️

growing up in the matrix

 i think about the movie "the matrix" a lot. it is one of the films i have watched more than any other, and just re-watched it over two recent evenings.

the film came out when I was around 10. it released in theaters March 31st 1999, and, being rated R, it didn't really enter my radar until it was released on DVD,  september 21st 1999. 

i was in 4th grade. one of my best friends at the time, whose birthday is december 28th, was planning a birthday party for that year, and the Draw was going to be, he had a copy of the matrix on DVD (not to mention, he actually had a DVD player). being a bunch of 10 year olds and knowing it was action packed with bullets blood AND kungfu AND slow motion? we would do anything to see it. i remember a concentrated propaganda effort to convince my, and all of our, parents that even though it was rated R, it was just cuz it had some blood and some bullets, so there's really no problem here. (side note, columbine was earlier this same year. i am suprised we got away with this.) trivial side note, the matrix ended up being my 2nd r-rated film viewing. the first was "waterworld" at a neighbors house whenever that movie came out. sometime the year after my matrix experience was an all night sleepover for another friend's birthday party. we watched Blade, and The Big Lebowski, and i think I fell asleep during the third film. my friend had a strobelight. after watching blade we turned it on and I remember how freaky and fascinating it was to see myself and my hands move in slow motion. who needs drugs when you have a strobelight and loud music in your friend's basement living room. (i am pretty sure we listened to the prodigy's "fat of the land" while collectively absolutely losing our shit jumping off the the couch and the stairs from higher and higher and feeling like we were floating down to the ground. actually, i just remembered that i kind of had a panic attack. it was crazy!) most other r-rated films were Banned from being Blockbustered, but that's where friends came in.

of the complex plot, i don't really remember how much i absorbed from this initial viewing. (yes, the party went off without a hitch.) I remember I saw it again in the following spring, during an overnight stay at elementary school. not sure if this was common, but our afterschool program would host sleepovers a few times a year, with copious amounts of pop corn and ice cream sundaes, and movies projected in the auditorium. i have no idea why it was allowed but that year they too showed us the matrix. i guess the 90s were just crazy. i don't think a school would show their 4th graders the matrix in such an anarchic midnight environment these days. san francisco too, i guess, is at play here. i don't remember much from the 2nd viewing, either, except that there was a makeshift karaoke talent show on stage before the movie began. it was probably all backstreet boys and nsync. i also think there were lots of overnight activities going on around the school and the movie was just one of the things you could do at this adventure playground. really, it's crazy to think that our school just handed us the plot of "over the edge" on a silver platter and said "go fucking nuts, we don't care." what sort of reverse psychology were they trying to pull. anyway.

over the years, the matrix was a stalwart presence. 

there was the "goddamn you cypher" site on You're The Man Now Dog. remember YTMND? you can still see it here. remember finding forrester? remember when america (by which i mean the snarky corners of the internet) was cynical and made fun of sean connery even though he was just being cute and earnest and following his heart? i miss those times. i think america needs a dark/sick sense of humor to survive, because we have a dark history, and present, and future, but the religious right and conservatives and all their permutations keep fucking it up for everyone. but even if, overnight, religions disappeared, new ones would naturally develop, it's human nature. same goes for capitalism. but the two have formed an unholy union slash feedback loop and that's REALLY what's fucking it up for everyone. or whatever, anyway:

there was that time Sophia Stewart filed a lawsuit claiming the wachowski's stole her short story concept and owed her a billion dollars. one night on youtube about 6 years ago I stumbled on a presentation/lecture/speech she gave. i tried to find it again to share in this post tonight, but no luck. if i do find it i will publish a P.S. but i can tell you she came across as crazy, and not in the, just crazy enough she might be right, kind of way. and there is plenty of other material out there if you do want to watch. and, the courts ruled that she could not provide, for whatever reason, strong enough evidence to prove her case. it may or may not be worth noting, that she did send a copy of her novella called "the third eye" to the wachowskis in 1993, i have not read it but the courts have, but that's literally all that is corroborating that i have been able to come across. if i had to guess her book is just based on some sort of spiritual awakening she had where she realized all the same things that Agent Smith talks about and the conflicts that drive the plot of the film, and since it was only a novella and Disillusionment is a Universal Concept, and i'm sure that there's no shared character or place names, that's why the case was tossed. (and it was so traumatic of a revelation for her that she ended up being tunnel-visioned in it for over a decade)

it is however interesting to note: due to a series of low-level Intern errors and the virality of such a claim, from 2004 to as recently as 2013 there have been many articles written online saying she won her billion dollar lawsuit.

the film is owned by warner brothers. i think it's the first time I saw their opening credit bit, with the fluctuating camera gaze over the rows of warehouses (studio lots) that is commonly bronze/sepia-toned, but was, for the matrix, neon green instead.

 

it was probably in 2014 or so a DJ acquaintance of mine, a notoriously cantankerous fellow no doubt, who frequented the record store, said something about Big Tech and the "surveillance matrix." at that point I don't think i had thought about the matrix in a while, and so my ears took a liking to the phrase, and I still pepper it into conversation when i get the chance.

in the film: the  matrix isn't real.
THE MATRIX. ISN'T. REAL.
PUT. THE GLASSES. ON.
THE MATRIX ISN'T REAL.

but.... as we're watching, or after we've watched and we are sitting around and thinking, we realize that even though in the movie the matrix isn't real, the matrix looks an awful lot like our world. and even the things that are bad about the matrix, the things that agent smith hates, those are the things that when we're being really honest with ourselves, our kind of also the thing we hate about the matrix. uh, i mean, our lives.

so if the matrix isn't real but the matrix is like our life, is our life not real as well?

the dual layers of relatability present in the film and its ideas and its juxtaposition over real life are presented in such a literal way (that scene where Neo and the gang are in a limo, headed to meet the Oracle, and they drive past a restaurant and Neo remarks, Whoa... I used to eat there... knowing now that this recognition is occurring in a vegetative state as he dreams the matrix, he seems to chuckle in simulation as trinity gazes lovingly, mutely, from behind sunglasses, offering only a cheshire's curl of corner-lip as clue. and, of course, the classic, cream-of-wheat discourse. who wants to talk about morphemes and phonemes? why is red 'red', man, if i could call it 'blue'???) means that it is hard not to see it everywhere once you get turned on. this happens in all directions. there is pre and post matrix Experience. (there is pre and post drug-matrix experience, an act which is redundant as the movie IS drugs [all of this leads to a real Fractalized experience when in fact compounded] [and yeah, our life is also not real btw].) means that you see it everywhere behind you and can't help but notice it around you and are wary of it ahead of you. 

 this piece was put up in 1998 by Precita Eyes. it reads, "i was watching it - i couldn't look away, but part of me was watching myself watching, realizing that while i watched, i was being changed." i have taken many photographs of this piece over the years, it is near where i grew up and i remember a time before it was there and noticing it for the first time shortly after it went up. i like this one because it has a little heart someone added at the bottom. no mean feet, this is high up on a wall. anyway. there are other things about it that stuck with me. the fact that there is a me written inside the me, and watching it appears twice, and that the Z, perhaps representing sleep, perchance to dream sleeps the dreamer, morphs into the I below it. also that there is a phone number in the thought bubble (also how great is it that this is all a bunch of connected thought bubbles) asking you, what do you think ? it's a masterpiece, as far as i'm concerned. just like the matrix.

the film was so real that it caused shockwaves.

oh, and don't get me started on The Truman Show, which came out the year before the matrix. not sure when i first watched it, but around the same time. i remember several times watching it by myself and really being blown away by it. also because at the time i only knew jim carrey from the mask, a movie i loved then but was also kind of terrified by. i'm sure it all gave me a lot to think about.

hashtag also mandela effect cuz i'm sure it's in there somewhere. deja vu is a glitch in the matrix.

anyway. more to say about all this later, it's getting late and that's plenty for now. see ya later. ✌️

john legend, times square, chrissy teigen, sports illustrated, amazon prime, and cookbooks -

 direct from horsemouth:

"
The Gray Market: Why Bob Dylan’s $300 Million Windfall Debunks the Myth of the Sellout Artist (and Other Insights)

Our columnist uses the sale of Dylan’s songwriting catalog to show artists have little to fear from aggressively monetizing their practice. 

"
gray market being artnet's codeword for normalizing the surveillance matrix that in a post-panama-paper asking-cant-afford world (hot on heels of post-art/brut) simply cAnNoT be avoIdeD.

 

how i have spent my corona

i miss blogging but every time i sit down to write i draw a blank.
i thought i could at least start with a list of all the things i've watched throughout corona time 2020.
if the title has a hyperlink then you can click it to find out more or maybe watch if it is on youtube it will be a youtube link.

March 2020

• AlphaGo (YT) humans try to make AI play go.
• I Do Not Know What It Is I Am Like, 1986, 89 minutes, color. A seminal video artwork by Bill Viola. (YT) (more info)
• The Incredible San Francisco Artists' Soapbox Derby, 1977 (YT)
• Alphabet: The Story of Writing (pt. 1) (pt. 2) (1980, Donald Jackson)
• American Juggalo (YT)
• A Life Less Ordinary: Voices of Tangier Island (YT)
• The Century of the Self, Adam Curtis, 2002 (YT)
• Jag Mandir, Werner Herzog, 1991. documentary on the "eccentric private theatre of the maharajah of Udalpur." (YT)
• The Man With No Name, 1977 BBC documentary about Clint Eastwood. (YT)
• The Slatemakers, 1980 BBC doc about Welsh slate manufacturing communities. (YT)

April 2020

•  Jobs? Never!! A skateboarding short film by Jim Greco. (YT)
•  
• i spent most of this month making art and playing video games

May 2020

• i spent the ENTIRETY of this month making art, playing video games, and then also having existential meltdowns

June 2020

• this month basically did not happen

July 2020

• i'm pretty sure that this month also never happened

August 2020

• believe it or not... i'm also quite sure this month didn't exist.

September 2020

• at this point, i'm not really even actually sure if i am alive anymore or not.
• finally, on september 22nd, I watch something again. Only The Essential: a Hike from Mexico to Canada on the Pacific Crest Trail. (YT)

October 2020

• Well, off to a strong start. I spend the first week of the month rewatching Twin Peaks - The Return (season 3). I become convinced it contains the secret of the universe. 
• I guess things must be getting better. I watch Cheech & Chong's Next Movie (1980) & Nice Dreams (1981).
• A captivating short-form video document of people hesitating at the top of a ten-meter diving board. (YT)
• Mountain Talk, a 20003 PBS documentary on the language and culture of southern Appalachia. (YT)
• Core Sounders: Living from the Sea. a 2013 PBS documentary about fishermen in Carteret County, North Carolina. (YT)
• An Evening with Robin Williams, 1983, from the Great American Music Hall. (YT)
•  
• At some point in the month it is my birthday. like many people i am sure, it was probably the worst birthday i can remember having. i wake up from a 2 hour nightmare about the coronavirus where everybody i know is sick and i have to kill several people who i love because in the dream it is actually zombies. then i wake up. have to go to work for 9 hours, the first 3 of which I still feel like I am inside a nightmare. eventually the day is over. it is book-ended on both sides by work days that feel like i am in a hell-world. 

November 2020

• i watch a documentary about Bobby Fischer that makes me feel very claustrophobic. it is called "Bobby Fischer Against The World." you can watch it on youtube but it will make you feel bad. (YT) 
• this month mostly sucks

December 2020

• Things finally start to get interesting again. I subscribe to the criterion channel and am recommended the films of PBS documentarian Rick Sebak, who makes documentaries about Pittsburgh and about subcultures of Americana and etc. On Criterion Channel I watch a handful of Olympics documentaries, almost all the films of Juzo Itami, Paris Texas, and a documentary about typewriters called California Typewriter.

Well, here we are.

I will write more to you later.

take care of yourself, and let us go into 2021 together at last.

Heavy Metal Parking Lot: some t-shirts

Jerri Blank fashion show pt. 2