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Author Archives: Lisa Marie Bowman
Music Video of the Day: Stop This Train by Adi Ulmansky (2013, dir by Yonathan Weitzman)
Today, we have another music video from our queen, the amazing Adi Ulmansky.
As for what it’s all about …. well, I don’t know. That’s the main reason I responded to the video. The more surreal and dream-like the better has always been my philosophy and this video leaves me wondering if I should go to work tomorrow or if I should hide for a few days. The sight of someone smiling while wearing clown make-up will do that to you.
Of course, it’s possible that J.W. Dunne was correct when he theorized that there is no such thing as “now” and all time may be happening all at once. In which case, I’ve either already gone to work or I’m currently hiding in my house. Of course, I may have misunderstood Dunne’s point. To be honest, for the longest time, I thought John Gregory Dunne was the one with all the theories about how time worked but then I realized that I was confusing my Dunnes. However, John Gregory Dunne did write a book called The Studio, which is the definitive portrait of Hollywood at the end of the studio system. Dunne wrote a later book about Hollywood called Monster which is interesting just because it gives you all the details about went on behind the scenes during the production of one of the most forgettable films ever made.
Anyway, enjoy the video!
Lisa’s Week In Review: 2/4/19 — 2/10/19
My favorite scene from All About Eve
That was quite a week that we just went through, wasn’t it? Basically, for any future historians who have come across this post as a part of a research product, the week pretty much started out normally enough, with the President giving his annual State of the Union speech, and then, with each passing day, things all across this country just got more and more batshit crazy. This was the week that proved that it’s a strange world.
But the important thing is that we all survived!
Here’s what I did while everyone else was making escape plans last week:
Movies I Watched:
- All About Eve (1950)
- American Boy: A Profile of Steve Prince (1978)
- Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
- Cobra Verde (1987)
- Crawlspace (1986)
- Crazy Rich Asians (2018)
- Extremities (1986)
- The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964)
- I Was A Teenage Serial Killer (1993)
- Ivanhoe (1952)
- Ladybug Ladybug (1963)
- The Last Days of Pompeii (1935)
- The Last Flight of Noah’s Ark (1980)
- A Letter To Three Wives (1949)
- Not of this Earth (1957)
- One Potato, Two Potato (1964)
- Quo Vadis? (1951)
- Rescue Dawn (2006)
- Simon of the Desert (1965)
Television Shows I Watched:
- 60 Days In
- The 61st Annual Grammy Awards
- The Bachelor 23
- California Dreams
- Celebrity Big Brother 2
- Charlie’s Angels
- Doctor Phil
- Face the Truth
- Ghost Whisperer
- Gilmore Girls
- Hell’s Kitchen
- Leah Remini and Scientology: The Aftermath
- Parking Wars
- The State Of Union Speech 2019
- Tales From the Royal Bedchamber
- Young Sheldon
Books I Read:
- Camelot’s End (2019) by Jon Ward
- Stranger Things: World Turned Upside Down (2018) by Matt and Ross Duffer
Music To Which I Listened:
- Adam Ant
- Adi Ulmansky
- Aurora
- Britney Spears
- The Chemical Brothers
- Coldplay
- Hilary Duff
- Jessica Simpson
- Lorena B
- Mandy Moore
- Nancy Sinatra
- Texas
- UPSAHL
Links From Last Week:
- I continued to review Celebrity Big Brother over at the Big Brother Blog.
- I wrote about a weird dream I had about Ben Affleck.
- On my music site, I shared songs from Coldplay, Mandy Moore, Hilary Duff, Adi Ulmansky, more Adi Ulmansky, even more Adi Ulmansky, and Lorena B!
- On her photography site, Erin shared SMU Mustangs, Stampede, Across The Street, Sunset, Under a Limb, Go By By, and Abandoned.
Links From The Site:
- Erin profiled Mark Schneider and shared the following artwork: Don’t Wait For Love, Tormented Lovers, The Robot Lovers, Campus Lovers, The Lolita Lovers, Paid Lover, and Made For Loving.
- Gary shared his favorite Super Bowl commercial, paid tribute to Mamie Van Doren, and reviewed The Last Hurrah, Gorgo, and Frenzy!
- I paid tribute to Albert Finney and shared music videos from Texas, Aurora, Adi Ulmansky, Lorena B, The Chemical Brothers, UPSAHL, and Adam Ant!
- Ryan reviewed Brat and G.I. Joe: Sierra Muerte, along with sharing his weekly reading round-up!
- Arleigh shared KPop from BOL4 and Ailee!
Want to see what I did last week? Click here!
This is going to be a great week, everyone! Not only do I have a lot of reviews scheduled to drop this week but it’s also almost time for the greatest holiday of all, Valentine’s Day!
(Oh hush, all you emotionally-wounded cynics! Valentine’s Day is the best!)
Music Video Of The Day: Cool Zombie by Adam Ant (2012, dir by Adam Ant and Adam Ross)
So, what’s going on here?
I have to admit that my initial response to this video was to make a joke about how it was a look at a typical Thursday night at Johnny Depp’s place but I actually like this video too much to be snarky about it. It may be an odd video but it’s a good kind of odd, I think You have to earn the right to indulge in the surreal but I think this song and the video have done just that.
Watching this video, I get the feeling that I’m not so much looking at the end of the world as I’m looking at the day after the end of the world. Society’s gone. All the good clothes are gone. You just have to wear whatever you can find. But the music is still playing and the boats are still drifting and that’s a good thing. It’s interesting that one thing that every post-apocalyptic vision seems to share in common is that people still desire entertainment.
Myself, I’ve already made my plans in case society collapses. It mostly involves watching movies until the Earth plunges into the sun. I’m thinking I’ll probably want to watch comedies. I mean, if you know the world’s about to end, I think you would want to laugh as much as possible before the end comes. Then again, I imagine some people would want to spend the end of the world watching movies about the end of the world just so they can brag about the irony of it all on twitter right before bursting into flame.
While the song is bluesy number about Tennessee, the title is a reference to how Adam Ant felt under the influence of his bipolar medication. Speaking as someone who shares the struggle, Cool Zombie is the perfect way to put it.
Enjoy!
Music Video of the Day: Drugs by UPSAHL (2019, dir by ????)
I just came here to the party for the drugs….
Truer words have never been heard.
I always appreciate a song that’s about exactly what it says it is. Even more so, I always like it when a video is about exactly what you think the song is about. The song is called Drugs. The song is about drugs. There’s a lot of drugs to be found in the video.
(And honestly, who has never gone to a party just for the drugs?
Seriously, watching this video made me feel like it was 2007 all over again.)
Of course, neither the song nor the video are just about drugs. They’re also about the empty banalities that most people use to get through life. It’s about being so bored with our society and our culture that you turn to something that offers up an easy escape from all the bullshit of people at parties, dropping names and searching for fame. It’s a song and a video about alienation and I absolutely love it and I’ll probably be singing it for the next few days.
Enjoy!
4 Shots From 4 Albert Finney Films: Saturday Night Sunday Morning, Scrooge, Miller’s Crossing, Skyfall
4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking.
Yesterday, we lost another great actor when Albert Finney passed away at the age of 82.
It seems strangely appropriate that Finney’s final film was the James Bond extravaganza, Skyfall. While Finney himself never played the world’s greatest secret agent, he was still definitely a part of the same British invasion that made 007 a worldwide phenomena.
Albert Finney got his start appearing on the British stage and it was the stage that remained his self-confessed first love. He started his film career by playing angry young men in gritty films like The Entertainer and Saturday Night, Sunday Morning. However,it was his starring role as a debauched 18th century adventurer in Tom Jones that made him a star. (Before being cast as Tom Jones, Finney came close to securing the lead role in Lawrence of Arabia. That role, of course, was played by another young British stage actor, Peter O’Toole.)
Because his focus was mostly on the stage, Finney did not appear in as many films as some of his contemporaries. When Finney did appear in the movies, it was often as a character actor as opposed to a traditional leading man. He played larger-than-life characters but he did so in such a way that, regardless of how flamboyant they may have been, they still felt real. He could play Scrooge and Hercule Poirot just as easily as he could play Tom Jones or a small town lawyer in Erin Brockovich. Even in his old age, Finney’s acting instincts remained strong. Just watch him in Big Fish or Before The Devil Knows Your Dead. Just watch him in Skyfall, giving off a gruff “Welcome to Scotland” after gunning down the assassins that have come for Bond and M.
So, in honor of Albert Finney, it’s time for….
4 Shots From 4 Albert Finney Films
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960,dir by Karel Reisz)
Scrooge (1970, dir by Ronald Neame)
Miller’s Crossing (1990, dir by the Coen Brothers)
Skyfall (2012, dir by Sam Mendes)
Albert Finney, RIP.
Music Video of the Day: Got To Keep On by The Chemical Brothers (2019, dir by Michel Gondry and Olivier Gondry)
A new music video from The Chemical Brothers?
One that’s directed by Michel Gondry?
One that features a lot of dancing?
Of course, I love it!
That said, the video starts out so exuberantly but then it takes a bit off a strange turn about halfway through, which really shouldn’t be a shock considering that we’re talking about Gondry and The Chemical Brothers here. While I wouldn’t go as far as to call it body horror (because no one appears to be particularly horrified), it still definitely feels as if our dancers taken a trip into the world of David Cronenberg. Fortunately, things work out in the end. They always do.
As I stated above, this video was directed by Michel Gondry, who will always have a place in the hearts of most cineastes for directing Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Enjoy!
Music Video of the Day: Swallow My Gum by Lorena B (2011, dir by Ido Shor)
Before Adi Ulmansky went solo, she was a member of the Israeli experiment electronic group, Lorena B. Along with creating a dream-like soundscape, Lorena B were known for their visceral and challenging music videos, the best of which were like surreal visual poems.
Take Swallow My Gum, for instance. Swallow My Gum was both Lorena B’s first single and their first video. (It was also the first track on their debut album, the self-produced Siblings.) The video starts out as just another drive through the Israeli desert, just to get progressively stranger and stranger. Is Adi just along for the ride or is she being held prisoner in the back of that car? Is she traveling or is she being taken somewhere? Are the answers even present in the video or is it more important that we decide for ourselves? What are we to make of the child who continually flickers in out and existence? Whenever I see her atop the power lines, I’m reminded of the scene in Twin Peaks: The Return, where Harry Dean Stanton watched a dead child’s soul disappear into a traffic light.
It’s a video that plays out like a dream of dark and disturbing things.
As for the song itself …. well, gum could be taken all sorts of way, couldn’t it?
Anyway, enjoy!
Music Video of the Day: Work It by Adi Ulmansky (2013, dir by Diana Grace Windsor)
It’s Adi Ulmansky in space!
I should probably say some more about this video. Adi Ulmansky is an Israeli rapper and producer and a former member of Lorena B. I was introduced to her music by my best friend, Evelyn and what can I say other than we absolutely love Adi Ulmansky. In this video, we get both Adi in space and some appropriately metaphorical animation. What does it all mean? I don’t know and it doesn’t really matter. It’s a good song. It’s a good video. In the end, that’s the most important analysis that’s needed.
(I’ve seen Adi described as being “the Israeli Drake,” which is not a totally off description. Of course, ultimately, Adi is uniquely Adi.)
Enjoy!
Music Video Of The Day: Animal by Aurora (2019, dir by Tim Mattia)
So, this video starts out with Aurora stuck in a cage in a back of a truck and your natural reaction is to say, “Get her out of that cage!” Of course, as soon as she gets out, she kills a man, starts to spit up eggs, and eventually finds herself in one of those dystopian clubs that everyone goes to in the future. (I mean, even Britney Spears found herself stuck at one.)
So, maybe things were actually better in the cage. Perhaps that’s what the future holds for us all — a cage of our own on the back of a truck. Hopefully, there will be some variety as far as the cages are concerned. Myself, I’d prefer a big cage that has room for a bad and a couch and nice TV. It would appear that Aurora got suck in one of the cheaper cages, which just doesn’t seem right.
I believe that the point of this video is that everyone’s an animal, driven by animalistic desires. I have to agree with that and it certainly does explain a lot about what’s been happening on twitter lately. That said, I like the video mostly because I have a weakness for shadowy cityscapes. There’s literally not a single song that can’t be improved by a music video taking place in a dark alley.
Enjoy!
