Tag Archives: shock

The Spielberg Face

“A childlike surrender in the act of watching”: Here’s an enjoyable, clever, and oddly gravely-voiceovered YouTube vid which examines one of director Steven Spielberg’s most famed and influential tropes – the close-up of a face struck with awe, wonderment or shock. Hat tip to Guillaume Gendron for the spot. Enjoy:

Shock tactics

Harmony Korine’s short film Umshini Wam (Bring Me My Machine Gun) has been picked up exclusively by Vice magazine. Ninja and Yo Landi of South African rap oddities Die Antwoord star as wheelchair bound gangsters who roll around, swear a lot in what sounds like a Jersey accent (as in Channel Islands Jersey), and well… you’ll find out.

How you feel about this will depend on your feelings about Korine (writer of Kids, director of Gummo and last year’s inexplicable You’ve Been Framed-meets-Dante’s Inferno carnage Trash Humpers).  Whether you hail him as a cutting-edge provocateur or dismiss him as an overhyped bore there is absolutely nothing on show here that will change your mind. Umshini Wam is deadpan, disjointed, self-consciously odd, nicely shot and worth a watch.

Anyway, if you really want to be shocked, you could do a lot worse than get into The Gerogerigegege, a Japanese music project, which started in 1985, and shambled on until the disappearance of lead creative mind Juntaro Yamanouchi a few years ago.

Notable for onstage masturbation (sometimes via vacuum – NSFW), and album titles like ‘Tokyo Anal Dynamite’, ‘Recollections of Primary Masturbation’ and ‘Saturday Night Big Cock Salaryman’, you’ll need to be prepared. In the words of Yamanouchi:

Fuck compose, Fuck melody, Dedicated to no one, Thanks to no one, ART IS OVER
Here is a selection of cover versions by the inimitable Gerogerigegege:

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