Since 1996 |
  
Your Gateway to Music and More from a Christian Perspective Slow down as you approach the gate, and have your change ready.... |
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Since 1996 |
Your Gateway to Music and More from a Christian Perspective Slow down as you approach the gate, and have your change ready.... |
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The American Astronaut (BNS Pictures/Facets Video) Not Rated A black&white art/cult movie from 2000 that made it to DVD this year,The Ameircan Astronaut blows minds as it plays with profundity and nonsense, style and substance to surrealistically serio-comic effect. Its moral? Youll have to watch and decide for yourself. Beginning at a tavern on a boulder orbiting Mars, story on its face appears simple enough. A cocky U.S. space traveler journeys to female-populated Venus for a substantial financial reward in order to drop off the one male it needs every now and again to keep the bloodline from becoming inbred. He is delivering the vaunted Boy Who Has Seen A Woman's Breast (Gregory Russell Cook, looking very much like the youthful intersection of movie serial hero Crash Corrignan, Greek god Mercury and Aqua Teen Hunger Force's Dr. Weird) and will bring back the corpse of the last guy, who died there. It may seem like a poor, soft-porn excuse of a premise, but the seemingly non-sequiturs of action and oddity that lead up to the culmination of that objective make for some of the most striking film making since Orson Welles' heyday. Much of what makes Astronait memorable are the touches coming from the nigh inscrutable imagination of lead actor/director/screenwriter/musical director (via his post-punky band, The Billy Nayer Show), Cory McAbee. People are turned into piles of sand (through which one anguished character agonizingly dances), a pitiably fidgety and inarticulate man in a body suit and skull mask (named Bodysuit) joins the journey to Venus, a rambling joke about itching testicles gets told in the sorta-Martian tavern. McAbee's homeless life from a suitcase informs the movie's (meta?-)narrative, as do Alfred Hitchcock, Franz Kafka, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir and Brian Eno (?!). The broad cinematic referents make this a deeply threaded passage into the psyche. The idiosyncrasies of film maker McAbee arguably make for overall neutral moral content (sensitive viewers should brace themselves for a couple instances of the f-word and the aforementioned testes joke). Aspiring godly film makers should have their imaginations and breadth of technique challenged in a way that no Cloud Ten production likely ever will. Alt rock fans will cherish the soundtrack (listen for "The Girl With The Vagina Made of Glass" when the spaceship lands on Venus; were Rocky Horror not so much about trannies, it woulda' been a cinch). Trivia hounds of alt rock from a couple of decades back will appreciate appearances by cowpunk pioneer Ned Sublette and Annie Golden (as Cloris, queen of Venus!). McAbee's director's commentary is equally as imaginative as this his first full-length film. He stands before a screen projecting it, explaining aspects of the movie as a live audience asks him questions. If your sensibilities
can handle it, ask the booker at your nearest art/revival house to schedule
The American Astronaut. Bypassing the big screen to get the DVD yourself
means you can share the fun (and possible irritation) with your friends
on your own terms. Just as McAbee might want it.(<http://www.americanastronaut.com>www.americanastronaut.com
, www.facets.org)
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