Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead
Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, the latest film from director Sidney Lumet, is a cautionary tale that takes a seemingly victimless crime then painstakingly analyses the disastrous consequences. As an illustration of how people can be easily driven by the tedium and pressure of everyday working life to extreme acts, it succeeds. Clever filmic techniques such as repeating the same situation from different viewpoints provide new information in an innovative way, but the overuse of this technique becomes tedious. The characters, while well acted, have few redeeming qualities, only the father played by Albert Finney being a man of any morale fibre. They are disgusting humans and their previous misdemeanours all come to curse them in a variety of ways. The film is devoid of humour or hope and is one of the darkest and most depressing I have ever seen, but maybe that’s the point. Most people spend their lives tolerating situations they hate and while at times excruciating, it was also uplifting. It was like watching a horrific, slow motion car crash, but did show how easily society turns people into lifeless, uninspired drones and reminded me to never become one of them.
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Also by XAVIER TOBY
Based on the Booker Prize Winning novel by J.M. Coetzee, John Malkovich is superb as David Lurie, a poetry professor without much of a moral compass. He is dismissed from his university in South Africa for taking advantage of a student, and moves to the country to live with his daughter, where the crimes she suffers through forces him to analyse his own mistakes. Disgrace is a wonderfully layered film, filled with complex characters and almost requires repeated viewing to fully appreciate the many issues covered. Despite the lack of action the piece never drags. At its worst, film is disposable and boring. At its best, film informs, inspires debate and forces each viewer to question their own moral code. This is film at its best.
Sarah Watt’s My Year Without Sex trailer
An Australian film that focuses on the hardships suffered by a typical lower-class family. I can feel you cringe, but there’s no need. This isn’t another clanger that relies on clichés and lame jokes, that portrays average Australians as simple and backward. Here are intelligent, warm, loving people struggling with a series of hardships with individuality, honesty and strength. Read more
A few years ago, a few German high school students went a bit nuts. The students had been adamant that fascism could never again take hold in Germany. So the teacher started a social experiment to prove that it could, and the students got a little caught up in it, to say the least. In reality, the whole thing was shut down before it got too out of control. This film is a fictionalised version of that out of control experiment and does an excellent job of showing, in a contemporary setting, just how easily fascism can develop support and discriminate against those involved, with even the teacher caught up by the amount of power he has over the students.
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If you’re a sucker for good strong figurative work with a flair for the unexpected, you’ll like the work of New York illustrator, Michael Camarra for sure. I’ve known Camarra since our days back at Pratt, when he still painted with a brush and a tube of paint. Now that Camarra has moved on up into the realm of digital painting, I’m amazed at how, incredibly, the digital paintings lose almost none of the raw spontaneity his traditional paintings possessed but instead introduce a somewhat cleaner edge overall, which lends itself to his cleaner graphic sensibilities. Read more
The Phenomenal Handclap Band is a collection of musicians and artists from Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn who perform live as an eight-member powerhouse, creating an eye-popping spectacle more akin to a spiritual church revival than a rock show. We have their single, 15 to 20, available for free download via the Music Download section of Lost At E Minor.
The work of Ho Chi Mnh-based, French illustrator, Nadège David, is stunning: intricate patterns woven deep amongst gently rolling, and pleasantly muted, colours. Read more
Print Liberation is an exceptional Philadelphia-based creative visual agency whose website showcases a variety of deisgn styles, each immaculately executed. Read more
This entertaining documentary follows a group of seemingly clichéd American teenagers in their last year of high school. Through a comprehensive recording of their lives it reminds us that, when examining anything in detail, there is no such thing as a cliché. The naivety and hope of each student shines through, providing a memorable and accurate portrait of a middle-American high school. Read more
Too beautiful to simply pass by, this is the Ring House by young Japanese architectural firm, TNA. Read more
One of Cyberoptix most popular designs is now on some amazing hand-woven, Fair Trade silk scarves. As always, they handscreen them all in their Detroit studio. Read more
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Design collectives can often be a mess, only bound together by a splash page and a few lines of text. Lie-ins and Tigers are without a doubt one of the most unified collectives and one of my favourites. Sam Kerr, Walter Newton and Russell Weekes may all have their own sites and services, but in collaboration, the humour and design intention remains remarkably unified. Read more
Saira McLaren’s interpretation of the spiritual world
Saira McLaren is a Canadian born, Brooklyn-based artist whose blurred paintings of the natural and spiritual world are disturbing for what they reference as well as what they deny. McLaren has shown at Heskin Contemporary, New York, NY, Acuna-Hansen Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, and Mississippi State University. Read more
We asked Arizona-based artist Joe Sorren what we would have been if he hadn’t been handed the most ridiculously generous serving of artistic talent: ‘Art historian and conservationalist. Or a botanist. Or I’d work with horses. It would be interesting to be behind the scenes in politics, at least for a while. Or maybe a studio musician, or invent games, or a … I would rather paint’. Ah, we agree.
I’m a sucker for just about anything to do with printmaking. UK illustrator Jonny Hannah makes a very strong case. Busy, colorful, spontaneous and brimming with inspiration, THIS is the stuff amazing is made of. Read more
Frank Kozik’s Emperor of the Golden Throne
Limited to a set of just sixty-six pieces, each Frank Kozik Hand Painted Emperor Of The Golden Throne El Panda vinyl toy is signed by Kozik and comes bagged with a hand-numbered header card.
Legendary pop culture artist and Agit Pop founder Ron English will be a guest compiler of an upcoming issue of our email newsletter, writing about his favorite cultural discoveries. To read Ron’s edition of Lost At E Minor, simply sign up to our weekly newsletter. It’s free, you win!
Cassettes Won’t Listen is the brainchild of New York-based, multi-instrumentalist and producer Jason Drake and is the latest of an abundance of musical monikers he has realised over the years. Small-Time Machine is Cassettes Wont Listen’s first-ever physical release and is available for US$23.70.
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