Luis Nieto rocks !

Luis Nieto is a guy I first saw in Clermont-Ferrand, during the opening ceremony of the International short movie Festival. He's a student from the ENSAD (Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs), and does a lot of 3D graphic videos.

His most famous work is "Carlitopolis", in which he uses a fake camera to show quite interesting exmperiments on a lab rat.
The second video is a music video he made for Faithless' single "Music Matters". I really like his style, and the song tends to linger in your mind...

Carlitopolis-en
envoyé par alyse

Faithless - Music Matters
envoyé par kromotion

Comic strips

Enjoy these 3 strips I found quite hilarious ^^

You were a poet and a painter, William Blake. But now, you're a killer of white men.

This post will deal with two related subjects.


First things first, a movie.

Actually, not just a movie, but a tale, a journey, a philosophical and poetic vision of a man's decay. This movie is Dead Man, by Jim Jarmusch, released in 1995.


I first saw it on TV when I was fourteen, and all I could tell afterwards was how deeply I had been moved, disturbed by this masterpiece. I did not get more than a glimpse of the whole message that is conveyed in theses images at the time, and it took at least five more years before I could watch it again. This time I was fully struck by the pure beauty and cruelty it contains.


I realize I have to give people who have never heard of Dead Man at least a brief summary of the story, but they should know it will never be accurate enough to explain completely my enthousiasm about this film:

"During the time of the American Old West, an accountant named William Blake travels by train to the frontier town of Machine. When he arrives, he finds that the job he expected to receive has already been taken. The company's owner, John Dickinson, drives him away with a shotgun. Jobless and bankrupt, Blake meets Thel, who sells paper flowers. While they are in bed together, Thel's boyfriend Charlie confronts Thel and attempts to shoot Blake. Thel shields him with her body, but the bullet passes through her and hits Blake. The wounded Blake kills Charlie with Thel's gun and flees.

In a forest, Blake awakes to find Nobody, a large Native American man, attempting to dislodge the bullet from his chest. Nobody concludes that the bullet is too close to Blake's heart, and will eventually kill him. When Blake introduces himself, Nobody becomes excited, mistaking him for the poet of the same name. Nobody confesses that he was captured and educated by white men in his youth, and has developed a love for Blake's poetry. Nobody takes the doomed Blake as a companion in his travels, telling Blake that his poetry will now be "written in blood". Meanwhile, Dickinson, who was Charlie's father, hires three infamous bounty hunters to kill Blake and, more importantly, recover the horse Blake stole.

Blake and Nobody travel the countryside and periodically clash with the violent and bigoted people they meet. One of Dickinson's bounty hunters, Cole Wilson, is revealed to be a cannibalistic psychopath, and kills his two compatriots when they irritate him. Dickinson grows impatient and spreads wanted posters of Blake, drawing more bounty hunters. Blake is wounded again during a shootout, and his condition rapidly deteriorates.

Nobody takes the dying Blake to a Makah village and convinces the tribe to give him a ship burial. Nobody puts Blake into a canoe and bids him farewell. As he floats away, Blake watches Cole Wilson sneak up behind Nobody. Nobody turns and they fatally shoot each other. Blake gazes up into the sky for a time before closing his eyes as his canoe floats away."

Taken from Wikipedia, th free encyclopedia.

I also included the poster for the movie, and a few pictures, so that you can make a better impression of the visual environment in the film.

An important notion on which the film relies is the confusion between William Blake, the protagonist, and William Blake, the English 19^th century poet… and this brings me to the second point of this post ^^

You may not know Blake’s poetry, and in fact I confess I had no idea who he was before Dead Man. But it’s really worth reading! I would say it’s deep but easily read, even by non-English natives; it’s part of the Romantic movement, so it might seem a bit pessimistic (who said despaired ?), but every choice of words he makes just feels perfectly right.

I’ll give you a short poem from his Songs of Experience as a teaser:

A POISON TREE

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears
Night and morning with my tears,
And I sunned it with smiles
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright,
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine, -

And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole;
In the morning, glad, I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

Well this message is becoming exceedingly long, so I’ll just stop here… but do not hesitate to check out this address for more of Blake’s poetries !

Poetries by W. Blake

I feel like....

A video for amateur film-makers !
It will provide you the perfect scenario for a sexy exotic music video... and the music itself is a hit !

Warning: You will need a bit of humour to appreciate the quality of this... thing. (and to stay focused !)

Amy Winehouse live

I'm sure you've already heard about England's new star troublemaker Amy Winehouse.
She's 23, has already released two platinum albums ("Frank" and "Rehab"), and has been through a bunch of rehab programs. She rude, her arms are covered in tatoos, her hair is as a real mess, but with a voice like hers, you can behave like the craziest weirdo in the world and still sell hundreds of thousands of CDs.

These are two videos from live sessions.
Amy performs "Valerie", from the Zuttons, then "Love is a losing game" from her own album "Rehab". Hope you'll like it as much as I do !

Crazy cover

This is my first attempt to insert a flash audio player in this page... and I succeeded ^^ !!
This allows me to share a song I love with you. Some of you might recognize last year's hit "Crazy" (Gnarls Barkley), in an acoustic version by Ray Lamontagne.
Enjoy !

The kiss

If I had to remember ONE single picture from ONE single movie in my life, what would it be ?
Pretty sure it would be this one, taken from Gus Van Sant's Palme d'Or winner "Elephant".

It's pure and innocent: actually it might be the only "happy" sequence in the movie, and that makes its impact even stronger.

Of course people who haven't seen "Elephant", and/or despise Vans Sant (people I call fools and don't even wanna know about !!) might not get the power of this image. Too bad for them ^^