Never Trust Your Pet With the Devil Vet!

My thoughts on Hateful Eight - Spoilers

noreply@blogger.com (devilvet) — Sun, 27 Dec 2015 21:59:00 +0000

Hateful Eight - Spoilers

Please Note: This is not a review. These are just my thoughts after my first viewing of the film.

1) Both a step forward and a step backward

A step forward in pushing the celluloid medium. But was the medium used to its full potential?

What happens to a storyteller and artist when they have to seek out the environments for their films rather than spontaneously generate them?

That opening shot was superlative. It captured everything that matters to a none digital filmmaker. It was a big expansive beautiful shot that the filmmakers had to wait for. It was an example of a fleeting sort of movie magic. Not the kind where you create spectacular worlds within a computer, but when you capture the magic moments of a real landscape onto celluloid.

I just wish that the 70mm felt as necessary of as exquisite with the studio shots indoors. If you remove the environmental establishing shots, was the 70mm necessary? Was it something that kindled passion for the celluloid medium in the way that Tarantino and others have so demonstratively advocated? It does make me wonder and wish that some of that amazing fight choreography in Kill Bill had been shot on 70mm (Wouldn't that be something to really move the medium a step forward...Please Quentin make something like that happen).

A step backward as a story teller?

However from a pure narrative point of view, I think this story attempts way less than Tarantino has attempted with his past two films, Inglorious Basterds and Django Unchained. It may be in there and I just won't glean it until a second or third viewing. But this was the first film of Tarantino's where I wasn't energized and enthralled by the end of it. I wasn't hungry for a second viewing. Where as I always understood the "why" of the violence in the other two films, I am still hunting for the "why" of this film.

Why is the Hangman so determined to watch his bounties hang?

Given the powerlessness of the Confederate General, why was Samuel so insistent to tempt him into dueling and upsetting the balance within what was already a very precarious environment?

Also, I want there to be something meaningful in that Walton Goggins and Samuel L's characters are the remaining two, but it doesn't feel truly earned to me given the huge political and racial obstacles of their backstories.

I don't know that I need a moral to the violence. But this film seems to aim for something more than "bad shit begets tons of violence". I know that an artist's ambitions for meaning don't have to follow a specific trajectory. But, I long for work from my favorite directors that has higher ambition than this film seems to have. Tarantino's ambitions for the last 4 films was huge. Given that, this film feels like a step backward.

Favorite Thing(s) This Week - Royhei Hase

noreply@blogger.com (devilvet) — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 09:28:00 +0000

This is some incredible imagery. Check out Royhei Hase's website for more

Favorite Thing(s) This Week - Alpha Flag

noreply@blogger.com (devilvet) — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 20:19:00 +0000

I am really enjoying Alpha Flag.

Favorite Thing(s) This Week - Sarah Joncas

noreply@blogger.com (devilvet) — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 10:52:00 +0000

Sarah Joncas

The mystery that is always unattainable. The secrets that girls know and can't share even if they wish too. A dark world devoid of boys, but still ripe with the danger and imbalance that desire brings. A touch of the uncanny. A mist of surreality.

FavoriteThing(s)This Week - AJ Fosik

noreply@blogger.com (devilvet) — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 10:45:00 +0000

AJ Fosik

Vibrant. Violent. Tex Avery Inspired Taxodermy. These pieces are so full of color and electricity. What sort of adventure was undergone to take down these beasts and mount their tokyo colored heads? These 3-D pieces always bring me a sense of joy, fun, and wonder.

Favorite Thing(s) This Week - Moebius

noreply@blogger.com (devilvet) — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 12:43:00 +0000

http://theairtightgarage.tumblr.com/

I love Moebius. Most of us do even if we don't realize it. This link is to a blog appreciating his work. H/T to Tony Akins for pointing the way to it!

FavoriteThing(s)ThisWeek - Richey Beckett

noreply@blogger.com (devilvet) — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 13:44:00 +0000

Richey Beckett
This is powerful stuff!

FavoriteThing(s)ThisDecade - Paul Pope

noreply@blogger.com (devilvet) — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 12:21:00 +0000

I remember buying a bunch of THBs. Not really knowing what they were, but so enamored of the images. I want to buy a copy of BATTLING BOY. Paul? Are you out there? Will you let me buy a copy already?

Favorite Thing(s) This Week - Brendan Monroe

noreply@blogger.com (devilvet) — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 10:53:00 +0000

Brendan Monroe

Also featured on BOOOOOOOM

Isolation. Mired in primordial sludge or thin quantum super strings. These pieces are melancholia caked with mud. I feel a sort of total lack of morality, something pre-moral.

Plays I'd Like to See

noreply@blogger.com (devilvet) — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 23:02:00 +0000

The Catupuncturist - Two brothers, one a carnival barker, the other a hobo, struggle to out do each other in a post apocalyptic world where cat owners want desperately to curtail and domesticate various felines' instinctual need for wanderlust. How? through Acupuncture! But when Cain conquers Abel in the market, he discovers too late that his technique is fatally flawed! But fatal merely for the felines? Or have these little beasts had one too many treatments leading to terrifying seemingly paranormal results?

Favorite Thing(s) This Week - Ray Caesar

noreply@blogger.com (devilvet) — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 11:06:00 +0000

Ray Caesar

Opulence. Decadence. Danger. Allure. A darling of Juxtapoz Magazine. I can not find the article, but I recall or hallucinate that these works are actually sculpted in a digital realm using 3d rendering software.

These feminine children are beguiling, but the narrative hints at something cautionary to me. Their beauty and youth seems Faustian. These women are the result of paranormal covenants. The painting above could be an apocraphal sitting room from the prelude to an alternate version of Sartre's No Exit.

Favorite Thing(s) This Week (or FTTW for short) is a recurring exploration here at DEVILVET. Anything that inspires us, but primarily visual artists whose work reverberates, delights, or provokes us.

On Alice, Why Alice?

noreply@blogger.com (devilvet) — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 20:43:00 +0000

Not long ago, I was seriously Anti-Alice in Wonderland. Not that I didn't think it was a good story. I just thought it was over done. I wonder what could be brought to it that hasn't been done before. I sort of wanted everyone to get over Alice and start to look for something else that achieved that same sense of the wonder, surrealism, beauty and awe.

But, we are a species that repeats and repeats. There is something about this story that we can not let go of. No matter how many Gaimanesque Heroines there are out there... Alice can not be dismissed.

My attitude toward Alice is changing too. Perhaps I am mellowing. Perhaps I just see the advantage to Lewis Carroll's approachability in the same fashion that Shakespeare, Chekhov, and Neil Simon are unquestionably approachable.

Having begun some serious video play with the current production, I think over 2012, the Mammals are going to play with Video and Alice.

Finger Inspiration - Taylor Mead Twins

noreply@blogger.com (devilvet) — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 01:31:00 +0000

noreply@blogger.com (devilvet) — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 01:17:00 +0000

Finger Links

possibly NSFW nudity

Finger Soundtrack

noreply@blogger.com (devilvet) — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 04:22:00 +0000

Script Bits - PM_IY_

noreply@blogger.com (devilvet) — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 14:51:00 +0000

SNAIL - I am so glad that B.B. introduced us. He is right you are… Well words just don’t… I really like looking at you.

BIRDY - (A little offput) OK

SNAIL - We have this movie, would you like to…

BIRDY - What is the movie about?

SNAIL - It is about you

BIRDY - Me? You don’t even know me.

SNAIL - To capture you, I don’t need to know you. I only need to see you.

OK that was short

noreply@blogger.com (Devilvet) — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 01:41:00 +0000

I know... I know... how many of us try to stop blogging but then we start back up again. But, I decided it was time to give it another shot. Jumping back in with both feet next week.

Sunset

noreply@blogger.com (devilvet) — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 16:30:00 +0000

Ok this is it! If you want to keep in touch you can try me at my facebook or check out the chicago mammals at chicagomammals.com

It has been fun amd exciting and I learned a bunch! This site will go offline next week!

Thanks again everyone!

Sometimes the best way to start over is to start over

noreply@blogger.com (Devilvet) — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 01:30:00 +0000

So, how many of us have done the old... I am signing off bit and told the world... no more... I blog no more... like Peter Parker we walk away leaving our mask on the garbage heap.

Let me say, I am not quitting, but I need to find a new way to do this and make it mean something. So fresh starts are the best way.

I plan on making this my next to last post at this address, this blog...

I am going to move my internet attention elsewhere... I just got to figure out where and how.

I will continue to update chicagomammals.com and/or themammals.blogspot.com with all things about the company!

Thanks everybody! Good Times were had here!

FavoriteThing(s)ThisWeek

noreply@blogger.com (devilvet) — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 04:08:00 +0000

tomiillustration.com

FavoriteThing(s)ThisWeek

noreply@blogger.com (devilvet) — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 01:38:00 +0000

Skottie Young

FavoriteThing(s)ThisWeek

noreply@blogger.com (devilvet) — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 05:23:00 +0000

Calamityjon h/t BoingBoing.

Thoughts on getting ready

noreply@blogger.com (devilvet) — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 23:26:00 +0000

Getting things ready for the next show. Trying to remember that the less I fret, the better. The more I merely prepare and then open myself up to whomever walks through the doors and whatever they bring through the door with them... the better.

I want this next one to be like a game. Like the joy one gets playing with toys as a child does.

There are very dark themes and actions to be portrayed in the Dream Journal. All the more reason to play, to enjoy. We will bring all our ability and craft and intelligence to this, but no matter how dark the material, we will dance while making this story!

Favorite Thing(s) This Week

noreply@blogger.com (devilvet) — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 19:59:00 +0000

Trailer #1 | "William Kentridge: Anything Is Possible" (2010) | Art21 from Art21 on Vimeo.

William Kentridge

Favorite Thing(s) This Week - Souther Salazar

noreply@blogger.com (devilvet) — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 06:04:00 +0000

http://www.southersalazar.net/