"Tokusatsu: Special Effects Museum" at MoMA Tokyo | Seattle Asian Art Museum presents "Monster Attack! Japanese Creature Feature Classics": Aug 23 - 30

Now this doesn't happen every day, or year, or decade... a major western news source has a feature on Tokusatsu, and not in the New York Times art pages, but the front page International section. The article's attention focused on the current traveling exhibit, assembled by special effects director and animator, Shinji Higuchi with aid from Studio Ghibli and Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs for MoMA Tokyo. The exhibit, Tokusatsu: Special Effects Museum featuring among other things, decades of painstakingly elaborate sets, costumes, aircraft models, sci-fi devices and technology, designs, schematics, storyboards and monsters of course, no shortage of monsters. The stunningly executed trailer for the exhibit, a set piece for Hayao Miyazaki's apocalyptic God Warrior as featured in his post-Ecological Collapse manga "Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind" received attention on BoingBoing and Twitch earlier this year, and rightly, as the headline suggests, it features a "Giant God Warrior Appearing In Tokyo". Director under which the exhibit's curator Shinji Higuchi collaborated, the work of Shūsuke Kaneko will be gracing screens in Seattle, with the Asian Art Museum's summer film in the park showings of some of the finer contemporary examples of the Tokusatsu arts, the pyrotechnic and physical, "Godzilla, Mothra & King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack" and the stunning urban landscapes, destruction and scale of "Gamera 3: The Awakening of Iris". Both films providing spectacle competing on a level with what CG could offer at the time, and in the sense of physicality, often eclipsing it. As to be expected in the digital era, the industry is shrinking, with few young directors coming in to advance it's arts, and only two major studios making regular Tokusatsu features, which is the focus of the previously mentioned New York Times' "Rubber-Suit Monsters Fade. Tiny Tokyos Relax."

My Bloody Valentine's new album "MBV" & US Tour: Aug 16 - 25

So here we are, 2013, and My Bloody Valentine releases the generically titled "MBV" within a year of the equally delayed and nearly as anticipated re-released, remastered, "Loveless" & "Isn't Anything" & "Singles Collection" the latter reissues having their own particular, circuitous, and drawn out tale of release through a labyrinth of legal complexities with Sony. Best described in his interview for Quietus, "Not Doing Things is Soul Destroying" and a surprisingly in-depth piece for Pitchfork as well, "The Strange Saga Behind My Bloody Valentine's Remasters". Which in the end is nothing compared to the greater epic of "MBV's" creation though a relocation, rebuilding the studio, a meticulous, obsessive, perfectionist work ethic and the dangers of Chinchilla ownership as detailed in Mike McGonigal's 33 1/3 book about "Loveless". All of that, to then bring you an album that sounds, for all intensive purposes, as though it's a direct train of thought issuing from just years within "Loveless" release. Nothing so groundbreaking as that album's prime moving forward of the genre, or the harsh rock leap into the dark of "Isn't Anything", but a continuance, and an updating of the line of thought began two decades ago with those releases. Here they are again, to rock you live louder and longer (objectively it can't be argued) than you ever thought a bass, two guitars and a drum kit ever could. My Bloody Valentine's North American Tour, wherein thankfully, their Seattle show has been relocated from the megamall venue that was the WaMu Center, to the Showbox Sodo. The improved, but still regrettable acoustics of the new venue may make no difference with this one though, as their thunderous, terrifying noise... well, you'll not be hearing anything but MBV, for at least a few days, during and after.

Joshua Oppenheimer's new documentary "The Act of Killing" at Landmark Theatres: Jul 19 - Aug 22

Unquestionably the most noteworthy film I saw in all of this year's Seattle International Film Festival, Joshua Oppenheimer's "The Act of Killing" returns for a one-week theatrical run at Seattle's Varisty Theater. Now months later I still find myself stunned when attempting to make sense of the film and the immoral, (insane), surreal, sense-less events it depicts. Some of the more insightful reading and commentary on this documentary-hybrid that I've read to date can be found in both the current issue of Sight & Sound with Nick Bradshaw's "Building My Gallows High" and Stuart Klawans' brilliant "The Executioner’s Song" for Film Comment. Yet it's Werner Herzog's (who acts as producer on the film) response to witnessing a working print; "I have not seen a film as powerful, surreal, and frightening in at least a decade... it is unprecedented in the history of cinema." - that says it most succinctly. For me, it's a strange thing to have seen a work of such powerful, discomfiting content and execution and find oneself coming out at the other end of the theater experience incredulous. Incredulous not for the legitimacy of the historic events revisited in it's recreation, but for the literally unbelievable, total, absolute obliviousness for moral/social consideration on the part of it's subjects. I'm not talking Politically Correct considerations here, I'm talking torture, rape, interrogation, destroying of homes, businesses and communities and the murder of hundreds, thousands, (it's estimated nearly two million) alleged Communists following the failed coup and Suharto regime of 1965-66. Astounding that Oppenheimer has delivered this revealing, bizarre, surreal, disconcerting, hilarious, (yes if you have a conscience, you'll laugh, in the most terrible way) exhibition of the pysche of those who perpetrated one one of the most brutal of all the Cold War purges of Communist citizens in all of South-Eastern Asia. One abetted, like many of them at the time, with aid from the United States. The real world events are nightmarish in their scope, "The Act of Killing" ads yet another layer to the multiplicity of the horror, by way of the absurd, uninhibited exhibition, the pride, flair and deranged charisma (bizarrely fueled by impressions of western pop culture) of those who perpetrated it. There's no doubt some narrative-construction at play in Oppenheimer's work. The placement of our 'protagonist' Anwar Congo coming to the emotion "insights" he does, at the end of the film, is obviously designed as a punchline of sorts for the moral gratification of the audience. You decide to what degree you feel this colors the objectivity of what's seen. The depth Oppenheimer's surreal work of documentary reenactment peers into history's enabling of genocide via xenophobia, Cold War politics, economics, racial hatred and superstition is undeniable. Heart of Darkness indeed.

Carlos Reygadas' new film "Post Tenebras Lux" at NWFF: Jul 26 - Aug 1

One week only at Northwest Film Forum! Carlos Reygadas' "Post Tenebras Lux" finally arrives stateside after it's divided reception at Cannes in 2012 and Reygadas' unfazed, charismatic response. Glad as I am that we're able to see it in the theater, this is again an example of works that won prestigious awards at the world's most significant film festival (Best Director in this case) not being given distribution for over a year. Desirably challenging and certifiably defiant of the status-quo, Regadas' work can also be willfully difficult to the point of being obtuse, his "Battle in Heaven" representational of these trappings in my mind. Conversely and even concurrently, he makes some of the most gorgeous, powerfully naturist, intimate cinema being created in the world. 2007's "Silent Light" almost achieving a Carl Theodor Dreyer-like total reverie. It's this latter category that I'd describe "Post Tenebras Lux" falling into, as Manohla Dargis' "Juggling Primal Conflicts of Innocence and Sin" and Dennis Lim's "All the Dreaminess of Reality" for the New York Times both suggest. It's a curious film placing Reygadas in a sphere with the one director I see taking similar risks, making unconventional choices, upsetting audience expectations, his Russian compatriot of sorts, Aleksandr Sokurov. These two directors doing more in the way of inventive new approach to narrative, cinematography and perspective of the viewer, than whole other genres of film. And like Sokurov's "Faust" there are 'special effects' to be found in Reygadas' most recent film. Concerning which, I will say no more.

Substrata 1.3: Sound & Media Festival: Jul 18 - 21

For the third year in a row, Seattle plays host to this literally exceptional, now expanded four day mini-festival (three nights of performances, an afternoon lecture with composer Christina Vantzou on “Exploratory Conducting Methods and Graphic Notation” and fourth day "Subtle Listening" field recording workshop and hike conducted by composer and programmer, Kim Cascone) of precisely curated sounds by Rafael Anton Irisarri. Sounds spanning from the 'heavy' end (being the Sub in question) of the ambient, neoclassical, immersive, psychedelic and all things avant-garde, in the intimate setting of the Chapel Performance Space with a explicit audience in attendance (no loud rock bar, and hangers-on here) and a dedicated sound engineer. Exactly as a festival of these sounds, with the corresponding audience and venue should be curated, hosted and assembled. Substrata also bringing together in their annual catalog associated aesthetics, visual art, theory and photography. Check that lineup: Jacaszek - Grouper - Christina Vantzou - Kim Cascone - Noveller - Yagya - Ethernet - The Sight Below - Ken Camden - Sean Curley - Anticipating this year's festival will be equally memorable as the last!

From the Substrata site: "Substrata 1.3 is the 3rd edition of Seattle’s intimate sound & visual art weekend happening July 18 – 21, 2013. At its nucleus: an all-ages live performance program, workshop, and field recording trip within the beautiful Cascade region of the Pacific Northwest. The idea behind Substrata is to explore varying perspectives of scale though the use of sound, composition and visuals. It features three live performance showcases featuring accomplished and internationally renowned artists working within the cutting edge where structural abstraction meets physical dynamics. The performance program focuses on live electronic music: applying technology to a concert setting while incorporating traditional and non-traditional instruments. The workshop explores dilemmas within the sound arts community; the field trip engages participants and performing artists in deep listening exercises and mobile recording on site. Our goal is to create an immersive weekend experience that engages the audience in a dialog with the artists that goes beyond the constrains of traditional performer/listener interactions. Each showcase is curated to distinctly portrait different takes of the potency of minimalism, varying between weighty combinations of tonalities used to sculpt out atmospheric ambiance, or powerful dynamic structures made up of the subtlest filigree of sonic building materials. By creating compositional spaces dealing with a sense of mass, along with openness of structure, the perspective of scale and the listener’s place in relation is shifted to allow for greater a sense of place beyond the environ of the performance in the interplay of the moment and physics of the larger world. In all, Substrata is an event that fosters appreciation for our natural surroundings and creates meaningful interaction between artists/participants while exploring a new locality. As the name substrata implies, it is about subtle aesthetics that go beneath the surface and into deeper aural territories."

Peter Strickland's 'new' film "Berberian Sound Studio" at NWFF: July 5 - 11

It's been a good year since the release of  Peter Strickland's "Berberian Sound Studio", but here we finally are with it getting a week long run at Northwest Film Forum come July! Strickland previously delivering one of the more curious new director offerings in SIFF 2010, that of his psychologically disturbed thriller "Katalin Varga". The director being no novice when it comes to soundwork and the more avant-leanings of Modernism's past, he sought out Nurse With Wound's Steven Stapleton for the soundtrack and engineering on the film and in the time since spent the last half-decade immersed in mid-Century improv, noise and modern composition. As explored in Sam Davies' excellent review in the pages of Sight & Sound, this making for a perfect primer of sorts for his homage to 70's Italian Horror and Giallo of the defining directors of the genre(s) Argento, Fulci, Crispino and Avati. Davies stating: "not since "The Conversation", has there been a film quite so centered on the psychology/pathology of the aural as in "Berberian Sound Studio" with a cover feature on Strickland in that month's issue, his passion for the above-mentioned eras in cinema and sonic adventuring thoroughly plumbed. The fruits of which are graphically evident in his new film which listens as a best-of of sorts of current British explorers in the 'Hauntological Pop' hinterlands. James Cargill of Broadcast supplying the soundtrack, with Julian House from the Ghost Box label creating the title sequence for the fictional film-within-the-film, brilliantly titled "The Equestrian Vortex".

Cut Hands and Black Rain North American Tour: May 30 - June 10

Beginning at New York's Public Assembly, swinging through the west coast, hitting Seattle's Chop Suey, and arriving at Montreal's incomparable Suoni Per il Popolo festival in less than two weeks, this is a blink and you'll miss it opportunity. William Bennett's previous appearance in town as Cut Hands in Decibel Festival's Modern Love Showcase significantly exceeded what I expected of his live incarnation. Yes, this is William Bennett of Whitehouse we're talking about. Bennett who happens to have one of, (if not the), largest private collection of traditional African instruments in the UK... and since it's a 55(?) year old British gent who's been unrelenting about his aesthetics/approach to sound/physicality since the early 1980's, I certainly didn't expect him to stop now. What we were witness to in last year's Modern Love showcase was a deluge of brutal African rhythms and extreme frequency f*ckery, a evolutionary/mutagenic leap of the Whitehouse sound/agenda for sure. Expecting more of the same this time around! Especially that his set is proceeded by fellow Blackest Ever Black recording artist, Black Rain. Blackest Ever Black having become, in the course of just a few short years, one of the premier labels releasing all things darkly cinematic, electronic, issuing tech apocrypha of the cyber-occult. The outstanding album-of-the-year list making "Quarter Turns Over A Living Line" by Raime and Vatican Shadow's refashioning of the techno engine both being prime examples, further plumbing of the depths to be heard on the label compilation, "After The Affair". A night not to be missed by noiseniks, doom addicts and all lovers of corporeal, physical, 21st Century avant-sound!

Seattle International Film Festival: May 16 - Jun 9

It's that time of the year again! SIFF once again arrives a week earlier than usual bringing a spectrum of cinema from across the world. This year, like the string of years since 2009, sees a qualitative diversity-dip in the percentage of foreign cinema, arthouse, auteur and all things challenging or adventurous. These were content genres that once dominated the festival, making it of a caliber to challenge Toronto and New York. Those times, I fear, look to be officially over.

As a consequence we again get the thematically titled Pathways with the conceptual hand-holding of themes like "Love..." for the disproportionately large romance selection, "Thrill Me" obviously for adventure and action,  "Make Me Laugh" signifying comedic content, the infantile "Open My Eyes" for documentaries and the once-predominant New Global Cinema section is now categorized as "Show me the World". You decide how you feel about all this. Last I saw, it was adults a good bit mature (and senior) to myself that were attending International Film Festivals across the country. I wasn't quite aware the self styled clever-and-quirky' "Glee" tv demographic were going out of their way to seek out unknown cinema experiences in North America's urban centers. Makes one curious as to where SIFF are getting their demographic statistics, doesn't it?

Nonetheless, this year's fest isn't as painfully omissive as 2011 or 2010 for that matter. As a a hopeful hint of things to come, the lackluster programming described above waned a bit in 2012, thankfully. Nonetheless we're again seeing a glut of middle-ground contemporary romances, clever quirky dramas for the sub-Sundance sect and a lot of filler seemingly there to entice some imagined suburban demographic out of their Bellevue hobbles and into the city. But there's a good bit of legitimate, original, challenging, crafted cinema to be found in here too. SIFF in the past has existed as a focal-point of visionary cinema curatorialship, with the resources, funds and legacy to be hugely influential. This year I found some 16-20 films of interest, curiosity or gravitas that I plan to attend, by both directors of note and new developing artists. Overall not a bad year, but like I've been beating into the ground, not on par with the stellar run we'd seen spanning the decade of 1998 - 2008.

They've got a long way to go to gain back that lost ground, but I continue to be enthused about their new home at the SIFF Cinema at the Uptown and expanded screens between that venue and their Film Center. As always though, venue resources, influence, and legacy in the arts are all about what you do with them. That said, glad to have a international film festival of it's stature in my city. Anticipating the likely highlights of the festival in Ulrich Seidle's new trilogy of austere, unflinchingly brutal takes on the subjects of faith, hope and love, Sion Sono's second melodrama set in the wake of the Tōhoku earthquake/Fukushima disaster and the eradication of the 'safety' of moral distancing on the part of the viewer, in response to Joshua Oppenheimer's surreal reenactment by the murderers of over a million alleged Communists under Indonesia's Suharto regime.


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Friday, May 17
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6:30 PM - Peter Greenaway  "Goltzius and the Pelican Company"
Egyptian Theatre
GOLT1713

http://myaccount.siff.net/festival/film/reserve.aspx?FID=306&ID=16917

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Saturday, May 18
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11:00 AM - Alex Gibney  "We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks"
SIFF Cinema Uptown
WEST1813

http://myaccount.siff.net/festival/film/reserve.aspx?FID=306&ID=16800

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Saturday, May 18
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4:00 PM - Joshua Oppenheimer  "The Act of Killing"
Harvard Exit
ACTO1813

http://myaccount.siff.net/festival/film/reserve.aspx?FID=306&ID=16987

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Sunday, May 19
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10:30 AM - Thomas Riedelsheimer  "Breathing Earth"
AMC Pacific Place 11
EART1913

http://myaccount.siff.net/festival/film/reserve.aspx?FID=306&ID=16758

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Sunday, May 19
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9:00 PM - Kim Ki-Duk  "Pieta"
AMC Pacific Place 11
PIET1913

http://myaccount.siff.net/festival/film/reserve.aspx?FID=306&ID=17062

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Tuesday, May 21
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6:30 PM - Ulrich Seidl  "Paradise: Love"
SIFF Cinema Uptown
LOVE2113

http://myaccount.siff.net/festival/film/reserve.aspx?FID=306&ID=17181

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Tuesday, May 21
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9:30 PM - Sion Sono  "The Land of Hope"
Egyptian Theatre
HOPE2113

http://myaccount.siff.net/festival/film/reserve.aspx?FID=306&ID=16932

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Wednesday, May 22
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6:30 PM - Ulrich Seidl  "Paradise: Faith"
SIFF Cinema Uptown
FAIT2213

http://myaccount.siff.net/festival/film/reserve.aspx?FID=306&ID=17183

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Thursday, May 23
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6:30 PM - Ulrich Seidl  "Paradise: Hope"
SIFF Cinema Uptown
HOPE2313

http://myaccount.siff.net/festival/film/reserve.aspx?FID=306&ID=17185

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Thursday, May 23
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9:30 PM - Sergei Loznitsa  "In the Fog"
SIFF Cinema Uptown
FOGX2313

http://myaccount.siff.net/festival/film/detail.aspx?FID=306&ID=46148

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Saturday, May 25
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11:30 AM - Richard Rowley  "Dirty Wars"
SIFF Cinema Uptown
DIRT2513

http://myaccount.siff.net/festival/film/reserve.aspx?FID=306&ID=16807

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Sunday, May 26
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8:30 PM - Jessica Woodworth/Peter Brosens  "The Fifth Season"
AMC Pacific Place 11
FIFT2613

http://myaccount.siff.net/festival/film/reserve.aspx?FID=306&ID=17082

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Tuesday, May 28
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9:30 PM - Joachim Lafosse  "Our Children"
AMC Pacific Place 11
CHIL2813

http://myaccount.siff.net/festival/film/reserve.aspx?FID=306&ID=17088

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Sunday, June 02
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5:30 PM - Shohei Imamura  "A Man Vanishes"
SIFF Cinema Uptown
MANV0213

http://myaccount.siff.net/festival/film/reserve.aspx?FID=306&ID=17156

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Tuesday, June 04
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3:30 PM - Fernando Guzzoni  "Dog Flesh"
SIFF Cinema Uptown
DOGF0413

http://myaccount.siff.net/festival/film/reserve.aspx?FID=306&ID=16839

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Tuesday, June 04
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7:00 PM - Thomas Vinterberg  "The Hunt"
Harvard Exit
HUNT0413

http://myaccount.siff.net/festival/film/reserve.aspx?FID=306&ID=17035

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Saturday, June 08
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10:00 PM - Sophie Fiennes  "The Pervert's Guide to Ideology"
AMC Pacific Place 11
PERV0813

http://myaccount.siff.net/festival/film/reserve.aspx?FID=306&ID=17119

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Sunday, June 09
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2:00 PM - Saul Bass  "Phase IV"
SIFF Cinema Uptown
PHAS0913

http://myaccount.siff.net/festival/film/reserve.aspx?FID=306&ID=17169

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Sunday, June 09
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9:00 PM - Adrián García Bogliano  "Here Comes the Devil"
AMC Pacific Place 11
HERE0913

http://myaccount.siff.net/festival/film/reserve.aspx?FID=306&ID=17123

Boris perform "Flood" and All-Time Classics US Tour: Apr 23 - May 24

Previous years for my birthday, Japan's power-Shoegaze-Pop-Metal-Psych wondertrio Boris generously gave me the triple album assault of 2011. This year I'm being given the double-night at the Crocodile wherein they play their magisterial opus "Flood" alongside a second night of All Time Classics on this North American tour of multiple-night showcases. Two nights of more of the seriously blasting of-the-sun brilliance and cynicism-crushing intensity that I've seen them deliver every time they're in town as they manifest their ever-mutating mix of Doom Metal, Heavy Psych, warped J-Pop, dysfunctional Bro-Rock and more recently, their own thrilling new take on Shoegaze. Yeah, the latter we first glimpsed on their "Japanese Heavy Rock Hits" 7" series and more recently refined on the near-perfect "Attention Please" and the more guttural Psych assault of "Heavy Rocks", with that year's deluge topped with their upbeat pop-assault for the Nintendooo generation, "New Album". With 2013 we've seen a return to earlier forms with the Metal riffs of their newest "Präparat", blasting Noisecore of "Vein" and the heady Doom and Psych soundscapes of the reissued, remastered, expanded 4xCD box set "The Thing Which Solomon Overlooked: Chronicle". Making for another manically productive year for Boris, who also contributed a track to the comically titled, (this is a Japanese release, so it's ok, yes?) "Yellow Loveless" My Bloody Valentine tribute compilation. For those initiated in their hyperfluorescent joys expect to have your life changed with these two-day showcases of the spectrum of their mellifluous manifestations. For those not initiated... well... you too can expect to have your life changed with these two-day showcases of the spectrum of their mellifluous manifestations!

Nationwide James Turrell Retrospective at the Los Angeles County Musuem of Art, Museum of Fine Art Houston and Guggenheim New York: May 26 - April 6

Hard to believe it's been nearly a decade since the James Turrell retrospective "Knowing Light" graced the Henry Art Museum. Immediately establishing itself as one of, if not the, greatest modern art exhibit seen by me that decade. It's lasting impression even more deeply ingrained by having returned to the museum to further soak in the literally mind-altering luminosity of it's perceptual, hallucinogenic precision. 2013 sees a return of overviews of his work, in not one city, but three! The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum New York, will all host retrospectives featuring distinctly different aspects of Turrell's work, all three combining to produce an encompassing overview of the artists singular creative vision. Hilarie M. Sheets bottles the significance and anticipation for the nationwide retrospective by "Paying Homage to James Turrell, Who Turns Light Into Art" and a major, nine page feature in the Sunday magazine "How James Turrell Knocked the Art World Off Its Feet" of the New York Times, while Amy Abrams gets to the fundamentals of "How We See" for Art in America. Notably, the LACMA exhibit, featuring the largest selection, spanning six decades of Turrell's work and covering over 33,000 square feet of gallery space will have a running time of nearly a year. So we all have absolutely no excuse to not catch this coast-to-coast retrospective by America's premier modern alchemist of material, form, space, time and light. Photo credit: Emily Duff