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This DVD compilation of Simon Tarr’s award-winning short films includes: Growing Up Luke, Vow, Joe’s Suspenders, Desert Tango, The Cold Sun, Crescent Time, Burning Contour Matrix, Extremely Bright Lights and the Sound of Explosions, and Sundog Verga Matrix.
| Catalog Number: MC-159 |
Type: Shorts Compilation |
Genre: Short Collection |
| Copyright: 2003 |
Length: 43 minutes running time |
Format:
DVD Region: 0 (All) |
| TV System: NTSC |
ISBN: ISBN 0-9700463-2-4 |
UPC/EAN: 880198015990 |
| Label: Berserker Rage |
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Notes: Region ALL: Includes two pair of "Berserk-o-Matic Trance Spectacles"
DVD Features "Context-o-Matic" filmmaker's commentary.
This is a Microcinema Exclusive title.
Wholesale Purchasing:
Program MC-159 is available for wholesale from Microcinema DVD. Contact info[at]microcinema.com or call at +1-415-447-9750
Exhibition:
Program MC-159 may be licensed for Exhibition.
Films In Compilation
Growing Up Luke directed by
Simon
Tarr
USA,
Comedy / Satire,
1996,
video,
Color,
Dolby Digital,
00:04:00
Don't be fooled, children of the 70's. The most important decision any
of us ever made came in 1977 when destiny was thrust upon us all, when we were called to decide which Star Wars character we liked best. Sure, you may identify with Princess Leia or perhaps Chewbacca, but the
essence of your being is based on a more fundamental choice: Luke or
Han?
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Vow directed by
Simon
Tarr
USA,
Experimental,
1996,
video,
Color,
Dolby Digital,
00:02:00
You are cordially invited to attend a video game. Not an elegant epic
you may find on CD-ROM, but a simple, brutal slugfest as made popular
by the immortal Atari 2600. Pixel vs. pixel, slinging hot death across
the screen... But don't worry, it's open bar.
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Joe's Suspenders directed by
Simon
Tarr
USA,
Documentary,
1996,
video,
Color,
Dolby Digital,
00:07:00
Joe Kokoruda was a model of courage, never flinching in the face of
terminal cancer. He only wanted to spend his last days tasting good
food, keeping his pants up, and playing a mean game of chess with his
grandson.
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Desert Tango directed by
Simon
Tarr
USA,
Experimental,
1997,
16mm, Super-8, 35mm,
Color,
Dolby Digital,
00:07:00
Avoiding drought, starvation, and tractor-trailers, a gecko searches
for food and fulfillment in the desert. Survival is only the beginning
in this sexy and romantic fusion of cel and computer animation. Desert
Tango is a love story that moves past its own boundaries to explore new
fusions of form, and the position of landscape as soul.
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Cold Sun, The directed by
Simon
Tarr
USA,
Sci-fi / Fantasy,
1999,
DV,
B&W,
Magnetic Stereo,
00:08:00
A nomad wanders across an apocalyptic desert world, facing an ancient megalith and its deadly shadow.
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Crescent Time directed by
Simon
Tarr
USA,
Experimental,
1999,
DV,
Color,
Optical Monaural,
00:03:00
Monologue becomes dialogue as image, text, and voice intersect and fold back upon one another through this hypnotic night in the desert.
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Burning Contour Matrix directed by
Simon
Tarr
USA,
Experimental,
1999,
jpegs,
Color,
Dolby Digital,
00:03:00
Burning Contour Matrix combines pure digital images traded over email with hand-painted film, animated together to make a powerful statement about information overload, and the all-encompassing anxiety bred by an omnipresent system of mass media. The film can be viewed with Berserk-O-Matic Trance Spectacles (3D) glasses that force the left and right eye to view separate scenes in the same film.
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Extremely Bright Lights and the Sound of Explosions directed by
Simon
Tarr
USA,
Experimental,
2000,
Super-8,
B&W,
Dolby Digital,
00:04:00
This film delves into the anxious relationships between people and
technology. Centering on entertainment spectacle, the film draws
parallels to popular portrayals of warfare. The artist draws a very
delicate line; the film is funny (sans pastiche), yet it honestly
chills the viewer with simple truths. This film was released globally
on the Internet in Dec. 31, 2000 at 11:59.99pm (ISO8601), making it the
absolute final film to be released in the 20th Century. It even spooks
people who are young enough to have no memory of Cold War I
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Sundog Verga Matrix directed by
Simon
Tarr
USA,
Experimental,
2002,
DV, satellite,
Color,
Dolby Digital,
00:04:00
Misusing 3D glasses in cruel new ways, this film is the synthesis of
simulacrum and Solar Max. Viva Las Vegas!! The use of Berserk-O-Matic
Trance Spectacles (red/blue 3D glasses) greatly enhances the
temple-throbbing moviegoing experience in this follow-up to 1999's
BURNING CONTOUR MATRIX.
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2006-09-26 Educational Media Reviews Online
By Mike Boedicker
This collection of shorts from 1996-2003 reveals Simon Tarr as an inventive video and film maker of great range. The nine pieces consist of two documentaries and seven experimental works, both live action and animation, most shot on analog and digital video but with some Super-8, 16, and 35mm film elements included.
Tarr’s droll, dry humor is most evident on the first two works. In Growing Up Luke, he uses Star Wars action figures to compare himself to Luke Skywalker -- the bland, dutiful boy so unlike Han Solo, that cool Babe Magnet whom Tarr wishes he could be. The second short, Vow, cleverly intercuts footage of Tarr’s wedding with screen shots from Atari’s classic video game Space Invaders. These two works and the third, a sensitive (though never maudlin) documentary titled Joe’s Suspenders - about the last days of Tarr’s terminally ill grandfather - are all shot on consumer analog video, giving them the appearance one associates with America’s Funniest Home Videos and the like. But that same quality also gives them an immediacy most effectively demonstrated in Joe’s Suspenders.
The selections shot on digital video and film exhibit much greater resolution, and several are visually arresting. The Cold Sun is a black and white experimental work in which a young man dressed like a Tibetan Monk (or is it Luke Skywalker making another appearance?) roams an alien desert world. The live actor is actually superimposed over an animated backdrop, and the result is stunningly bleak. “Desert Tango” is perhaps the most polished animated piece in the collection, although much of the animation actually imparts the simple qualities of a child’s coloring book.
Extremely Bright Lights and the Sound of Explosions is an unnerving juxtaposition of two disparate elements: grainy, slow-motion Super-8 footage of “professional” wrestlers battling in the ring, with the soundtrack of a computer-synthesized voice blandly reading instructions from the book Nuclear War Survival Skills. Microcinema.com says the film “draws parallels to popular portrayals of warfare,” but it also brilliantly parallels the ludicrousness of the wrestling with the equally ridiculous instructions on surviving a nuclear war - they’re both pure fantasy. Two experimental selections, Sundog Verga Matrix and Burning Contour Mix, employ 3-D glasses - officially “Berserk-O-Matic Trance Spectacles,” included with the DVD. The glasses are appropriately named, since the effect is really not 3-D. The glasses serve more to accentuate the shimmering, pulsating quality of the images, which are the most abstract of any in this collection.
A good sampling of Simon Tarr’s recent work, this is recommended for larger academic and public library collections, especially those collecting experimental cinema. Unfortunately the DVD comes with no booklet or notes, although synopses can be found at www.berserker-rage.com/ludd.html.
NOTE: The DVD would not play on my older (circa 2000) home DVD player, perhaps because the disc may have been recorded in the DVD-R or +R format. It played fine on the newer DVD player in my office, but libraries/schools with older players may want to contact the distributor about compatibility. |
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Quark Star
MC-474, 2005
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Simon Tarr directs and stars in the digital science-fiction comedy epic "Quark Star".
Billions of years in the future, the fate of humanity rests in the hands of one deep space explorer. One vulgar, obsessive-compulsive, prejudiced guy in a tin... more >
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Rubicon
MC-178, 2003
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In his much anticipated first feature-length motion picture, award winning filmmaker Simon Tarr paints a stunning, sweeping technohistory of the human race from birth to obsolescence. Sacred geometry and ominous CGI intertwine with a retelling of... more >
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