February 2015

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U2 "Every Breaking Wave [NSFW]" (Aoife McArdle, dir.)

This short film released through The Creators Project uses the U2 song of the same name (and another one of their "free" songs, "The Troubles") as the soundtrack and inspiration for a love affair trying to last through the turbulent days and nights of early '80s Belfast.

It's deeply personal for director Aoife McArdle.

And for The Edge, who says, "The Aoife McArdle short film expands on the theme of Songs of Innocence which was largely rooted in our experience growing up in the early eighties in Dublin. Aoife chose west Belfast in the same period, as it was the neighborhood that was so formative to her. We think her work is something pretty extraordinary.”

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CIKATRI$ "Quand Me Réveillerai-je ?" (Aurélie Ferrière, dir.)

A self-proclaimed “avant-garde keytar-punk” band, hailing from Stockholm, Sweden, will hit American soil this March. Using a keytar as their sonic nucleus, CIKATRI$ culminates in a relentless and frenetic blockade of meticulous oscillation. The Swedish post-punks, with instrumentation including keytar, stylophone, drums, theremin, distorted bass, fast guitars, and French vocals, mix the music of France’s 1960s, Swedish garage punk, and the rawer sounds of the 1980s. Their third album, a double 7” EP named “Aie ! - le trois” is available on Bandcamp.

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Breaking The Internet with Director Joseph Kahn and Power/Rangers

Not many have the ability to break the internet. Kim Kardashian, of course, but also director Joseph Kahn, who has unleashed the R-Rated fan-film homage to Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers you never knew you wanted, while also opening a potential WW3 in fair use laws...

This latest "bootleg" from producer Adi Shankar, who previously made The Punisher as bad-ass as he always shoulda been, pivots on a perfect premise: What if you viewed the Power Rangers as the story of child soldiers enscripted to fight a horribly awful war, and what happens to those kids when they grow up amidst that insanity. Suddenly, a colorful and ridiculous TV show suddenly seems like downright evil.

Welcome to POWER/RANGERS, which lets Joseph Kahn loose to make the sci-fi gorefest that he should be getting millions upon millions to make for worldwide domination. Instead, you need to content yourself with this short freebie — which looks it cost a pretty penny — and hope you can handle Kahn Unbound. If you're a fan of his Spaghetti Western romp "Knights Of Cydonia" but wished it weren't boxed in by having to be a music video for Muse, this is for you. If you like your sci-fi with a touch of ultra-violence and just the right amount of ADD, this is for you. And, perhaps most importantly, if you're a fan of sticking a middle-finger to the many inconsistencies of copyright law, then this is definitely for you.

One entity apparently not enamored by this revisionist homage is Saban Capial Group, which owns the Power Rangers rights. Based on the flurry of takedown notices — see this explanation of DMCA legalities that foreced Vimeo to remove the video, —  Saban seems to be deadset on getting it removed from the Internet, which of course means that it will just get bigger and bigger.

The real fun will come if and when Saban decides to use the courts to determine whether Power/Rangers is parody or satire, fan film or professional creation, or just another example of how the Internet is making copyright laws increasingly irrelevent and unenforceable.

Pass the popcorn. This could be good.

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Leal "Disco Ball" (Carlos Lopez Estrada, dir.)

Never trust a bartender who garnishes your whiskey with a broken mirror shard. Unless he speaks French (Swiss?) and reminds you of all that is great about Serge Gainsbourg — well, almost everything that is great —  and unless he's willing to drink his own poison and got the Moves Like Walken. 

PS: You know the saying that you are what you eat? Well, you're also what you drink and all those mirrored shards might wind up forming something fabulous.

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