Riot Material

Art. Word. Thought.

Archives for October 2017

New Work From King Krule: “Dam Surfer”

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King Krule’s (aka Archy Marshall) new single, Dum Surfer, “is about as demonic as [things] can get. [Krule’s] voice, especially, is so tart and poisonous, that it’ll surely pucker one’s face. It’s as if in preparation for The Ooz [Krule’s new album] he was eating a box of nails and puffing at a pack of cigarettes every single day to get his vocals just right. The violent, bodily imagery of his lyrics, perfectly match this acerbic mood: he sings about his brains resembling “potato mash” and puking on a sidewalk. His backing band adds a dash of color to this bleak picture, with slinky guitar riffs and wiggly saxophone. In spite of all the doom and gloom, Marshall and his band have an innate groove. The accompanying music video breathes life in the sickly world Marshall imagines.” — Pitchfork Magazine

Blue My Mind

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CINEMA DISORDINAIRE

Reviewed by Kristy Puchko

Becoming a woman can be a traumatizing experience. Your body transforms. It bleeds. Your hormones swing wildly, subjecting you to fits of rage, sadness, lust, and self-doubt. You may look in the mirror and see someone you don’t recognize. You might rebel against this lack of control by acting out with booze, sex, and drugs. In these regards, the 15-year-old heroine of Blue My Mind (2017) is pretty common. But where this Fantastic Fest entry takes a dramatic and sensationally strange turn is that she is not becoming a woman. She’s becoming a mermaid. Far from a fantastical and glamorous experience, it’s one swimming in trauma and body horror. [Read more…]

A.O. Scott’s Better Living Through Criticism

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How to Think About Art, Pleasure, Beauty, and Truth
Reviewed by Edward Mendelson

An extract from “What Is the Critic’s Job?” in the September 28th issue of The New York Review of Books. In his review, Mendelson also addresses two other critical works: This Thing We Call Literature, by Arthur Krystal, and Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, by Erich Auerbach, translated from the German by Willard R. Trask, with an introduction by Edward W. Said.

Two lucid and intelligent books, A.O. Scott’s Better Living Through Criticism and Arthur Krystal’s This Thing We Call Literature, explore the same complex theme: criticism as a public art and a public service, performed, however, by critics who speak for themselves, addressing individual readers, not a collective public. Both books draw maps of the disputed border between popular and elite culture and find ways to cross it without pretending it doesn’t exist. [Read more…]

Beautiful, Bittersweet Body Horror: Blue My Mind

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Reviewed by Kristy Puchko

Becoming a woman can be a traumatizing experience. Your body transforms. It bleeds. Your hormones swing wildly, subjecting you to fits of rage, sadness, lust, and self-doubt. You may look in the mirror and see someone you don’t recognize. You might rebel against this lack of control by acting out with booze, sex, and drugs. In these regards, the 15-year-old heroine of Blue My Mind (2017) is pretty common. But where this Fantastic Fest entry takes a dramatic and sensationally strange turn is that she is not becoming a woman. She’s becoming a mermaid. Far from a fantastical and glamorous experience, it’s one swimming in trauma and body horror. [Read more…]

Hollywood in Havana: Five Decades Of Cuban Posters Promoting U.S. Films

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Part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA
at The Pasadena Museum of California Art
Reviewed by Nancy Kay Turner                 

“Necessity is the mother of invention” —English language proverb

“Hollywood in Havana: Five Decades of Cuban Posters Promoting U.S. Films” is a small but potent exhibit, part of Pacific Standard Time/ Los Angeles/Latin America (PST/LA/LA) at The Pasadena Museum of California Art until January 7, 2018. The posters in this exhibit were produced by The Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematograficos (ICAIC) or the Cuban film Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry from 1961-2012; all of them are silkscreened and are uniformly 29 ½ inches by 20 ¼ inches. [Read more…]

Get Out

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CINEMA DISORDINAIRE

Reviewed by J. Hoberman

Conceived in the waning days of Barack Obama’s presidency and premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, four days after Donald Trump assumed power, the comedian Jordan Peele’s semi-parodic horror film Get Out (2017) has a complexity worthy of its historical moment.

Get Out opens with a familiar horror-movie trope. Someone walking alone down a dark street stalked by a mysterious force. That the setting is an idyllic suburb, the someone is a young, increasingly panicked black man, and the predator is driving a white car gives the scenario an unmistakable reality. “The scene grows discordantly disturbing because you may, as I did, flash on Trayvon Martin,” wrote Manohla Dargis in The New York Times. That the black youth is not shot but rather abducted is a dreamlike condensation of the movie to come. [Read more…]