Yesterday, guest blogger Kevin Lee put two shorts by members of the Court 13 collective on his list of the 5 Best Music Videos of 2008, Benh Zeitlin’s clip for O’Death’s “Lowtide,” and MGMT’s “Time to Pretend,” directed by Ray Tintori. For those unfamiliar with these guys, Zeitlin’s the director of the much-lauded short Glory at Sea, on which Tintori is credited as writer and production designer; and Tintori directed the 2007 festival hit, the Wes Anderson-does-Frankenstein-in-the-style-of-Guy Maddin short Death to the Tinman, which Zeitlin also worked on. The filmmakers, who are mainly based in New Orleans, also worked on the Obama campaign earlier this year, and made a couple of videos for that cause.
Tinman is one of my favorite shorts of the past few years, and I’ve embedded it after jump. You can currently watch the 25-minute Glory at Seaon YouTube, thanks to Wholphin.
Beyonce’s video for “Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)” may have already garnered nearly 20 million views on YouTube, but it’s not the best of the many great music videos of 2008. Here are five that are better –– and none of them rip off Bob Fosse. You can see my picks for the 5th through 10th best videos of 2008 (yes, including Beyonce) at my blog, alsolikelife.com/shooting.
5. Killer Mike featuring Ice Cube, “Pressure” Directed by Giovanni Hidalgo
One can only imagine how many hours director Hidalgo spent ripping and mixing clips off the internet, cable news, and who knows where else, but watching the result is like a long night’s cram session for a Black liberation theory class in the space of a song.
The sheer breadth of footage is breathtaking, flashing everything from archival newsreel to Hollywood clips to graphic crime videos. The shock-and-awe montage makes it hard to arrive at a coherent thesis for grappling with the laundry list of social ills laid out by both the lyrics and visuals, full of jarring juxtapositions that radically recontextualize familiar images and figures into an alternative universe of hip-hop resistance. Even Barack Obama doesn’t come away unscathed: his “Yes We Can” iconography is eventually followed by a clip of him dancing with Ellen Degeneres that’s as ingratiating as Stepin Fetchit. The lasting effect is a purposeful distancing from the daily stream of images that spoon-feed us into complacency, something that viewers of any race or background can take to heart.
As Ice Cube says, “I’m here to deprogram you.” A machine gun spray of media-fueled dissonance, “Pressure” accomplishes in six minutes what took Oliver Stone’s JFK three hours.
Zoom in on: 2:46. The juxtaposition of Saddam Hussein and O.J. Simpson at their respective trails exemplifies the mad method of this video: a knee-jerk provocation, an inspired association, or both.
Michael Tully informs us that the Wholpin boys have made ourmuchbelovedGlory at Sea available for viewing in its entirety on YouTube. The 25 minute short is embedded above.
Michael Tully does alittle bit of everything. He’s a musician. Journo/blogger/critic. Oh, and he’s directed a pair of acclaimed films, the down and out on drugs in Jacksonville narrative Cocaine Angeland the David Berman rock doc Silver Jew, which will be released on DVD next week by Drag City. Michael is currently the editor of the indie film criticism blog Hammer to Nail, creator of indiewire’s Boredom and Its Boredest blog and occasional contributor to Spout and Filmmaker Magazine. Here’s his take on why The Wire is our young century’s greatest artwork, what’s so special about Max Richter and just how tough it is to get the rights to Richard Yates stories. …Read more
2008 has proven to be a year of many ironies for filmmaker Benh Zeitlin, some sweet, others sour. His film, the visionary SXSW shorts winner Glory at Sea, is a sprawling post-Katrina, post-Apocalyptic New Orleans epic about a roving band of vagabonds and their child companions, all searching for their things or people they’ve lost within the watery gulf. The film bowed just days after Zeitlin was nearly killed in a horrible car accident while on his way to Austin for its premiere. While recovering, a small cult has built around the film and Zeitlin’s profile has only continued to gain steam, culminating last month when he was named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces in Independent Film. He’s a true blue cinephile, with taste that ranges from the esoteric to the height of 80’s Hollywood trash (we’ll forgive him for not digging Antonioni’s masterful The Passenger).
We caught up with Benh to discuss the inability of contemporary movies to depict dynamic female characters, his obsession with filmmaking on boats and why Van Morrison is his dream collaborator.
Those who have been following the newssurrounding the hit SXSW short Glory at Sea (see the trailer above) know that the film’s director, Benh Zeitlin, is recovering from a hit-and-run car accident that happened en route to Sea’s SXSW premiere. Zeitlin didn’t have insurance, and his medical bills are reported to be in the high five figures. In order to make a dent, his friends and filmmaking partners have set up two benefit screenings of Sea, one in New York and one in Austin. The New York screening happens on Saturday night, and it’ll mark not only the New York premiere of Sea, but the world premiere of Benh’s short film, I Get Wet. Both films will be screened in Austin, alongside five other shorts by Zeitlin and his crew of collaborators, including Ray Tintori’s beautiful black and white fable Death to the Tinman. If you can’t make it to either event but would still like to donate to the cause, there are details on how to do just that on the Rooftop Films blog. Barring any unforeseen circumstances, I’ll be at the New York screening, so if you’re around come say hi.
Winner of the SXSW Wholphin Award (and rapturously reviewed for us at the festival by David Lowery), there’s not a single short film on the circuit more eagerly anticipated (by me, at least) than Glory at Sea. As director Benh Zeitlin is still recovering from injuries sustained en route to the film’s SXSW premiere, Sea’s next screening has been postponed until May. But in the meantime, via Twitch, we can watch the trailer. See above.
Benh Zeitlin, the director of the much-beloved SXSW epic shortGlory at Sea, is currently recuperating in upstate New York from the car accident that sidelined him on the way to his SXSW premiere. Although he was able to make it to the final screening of his film, Zeitlin was in the hospital for the rest of the festival and otherwise missed the SXSW experience entirely. So Rooftop Films (who co-funded Glory) have asked SXSW filmmakers who have the means to send Zeitlin a copy of their film on DVD. I know one or two SXSW filmmakers read this blog; please go to the Rooftop Films blog for more info.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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Benh Zeitlin, the director of the 
