Before Sunrise 

Observations on life, love, and longing abound in Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise. The movie stars memorable screen couple Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy when they meet as strangers on a train and join together for one night in Vienna. As the evening unfolds, each person lets their guard down, stories are shared, intimacy grows, and we become intoxicated by the promise of their chance meeting. Nothing is certain, and although time is short, we’re invited to grow lost in the subtle details and muse on the transitory nature of relationships and all their complexities.

2. A controversial new kid’s coloring book that graphically depicts the events of 9/11 has already completely sold out in its initial run of 10,000 copies. [via GalleyCat]

3. Did you know that Richard Linklater is planning to direct a movie about Karl Rove back in his early days at the University of Utah? Even curiouser: Paul Dano is set to star in the project. [via BBC]

4. In case you were wondering, this is supposedly the ugliest new building to go up in Great Britain in the past year.

5. The Smashing Pumpkins have launched a record club, and while we’re not sure what it really entails, if you sign up now you get a free download of an early 8-track demo version of “Drown,” with promises of more freebies to come. [via Stereogum]

Bonus Buzz: 9 Reasons Why Pennies Are A Nuisance (Presented By Abe Lincoln Photoshops)

SFW (1994)

Stephen Dorff became the filmic embodiment of Gen-X apathy in this tale of Cliff Spab, a shaggily handsome young guy taken hostage one night (along with four other people) in a convenience store by a terrorist group called S.P.L.T. Image, who threaten to kill their captives unless their seige is aired on international, live TV. Cliff’s catchphrase, even in the face of death, is “so fucking what?” — and once he escapes from the store, saving a pretty teenager named Wendy (a young Reese Witherspoon) and sacrificing his friend Joe (Jack Noseworthy), his mantra becomes a rallying cry for a generation. SFW is faintly ridiculous, but it’s also a dose of pure ’90s youth culture. And the soundtrack, featuring everyone from GWAR to Radiohead to Babes in Toyland to Soundgarden, is fantastic.

Come to find out, there’s actually a wealth of really terrific movies set over one long day or one long night (or both). Even when setting some ground rules just for the process of thinning the herd (for example: nothing with flashbacks outside of that time frame — which eliminated Reservoir Dogs, Halloween and 25th Hour, amongst others), we still left out some awfully good stuff: A Single Man, The Breakfast Club, The Paper, Training Day, Adventures in Babysitting (don’t judge), Collateral, Friday, Rope, Duel, the Die Hard movies, etc. We’re not saying these films are necessarily better than those; these are just the ten that struck our fancy today. Check ‘em out after the jump.

Do The Right Thing

Spike Lee’s third film is one of the few truly great films of the 1980s, an intelligent, nuanced, matter-of-fact examination of race relations in America and, simultaneously, a vibrant, funny, energetic slice of New York life. Set over one day — the hottest day of the summer — on one block in Bedford-Stuyvesant in the heart of Brooklyn, Lee’s narrative luxuriates in its collapsed time frame and crowded cast of memorable characters, meandering through what seems a barely-connected series of moments and vignettes before landing at the devastating culmination of a day’s worth of tension and misunderstanding.

This 90-minute gem delves into indie icon John Sayles’ secret life as a Hollywood screenwriter for Jurassic Park and other blockbusters, Bernardo Bertolucci’s unique take on the infamous sex scene in his groundbreaking Last Tango in Paris, and Lynch’s chance encounter with Mel Brooks. These revelations are joined by others from French badass Breillat, Agnes Varda, Richard Linklater, Todd Haynes, Ken Loach, Liliana Cavani, and Stephen Frears.

Read more about director Angela Ismailos, and dig deeper by watching Todd Haynes’ controversial short on Karen Carpenter, and checking out John Sayles’ blog.

Click through below for a series of exclusive clips from the film.

Bonus link: Richard Linklater’s pre-production notes for Dazed and Confused

1. Ondine

Neil Jordan‘s latest film is a fantastical tale of unlikely love and redemption. Colin Farrell is a fisherman who “catches” a beautiful sea woman in his net, transforming his life as well as his ailing daughter. But as the truth unravels, a darker underbelly is revealed that challenges the myth and forces characters to confront a stark reality. Sigur Ros’ hypnotically tranquil music provides the score for the eerily pleasing and deeply satisfying story that rivals Jordan’s best work.

Starting with a youthful interest in music, video, and computers, Arcangel has become the international poster boy for new-media art and has exhibited his experimental, witty works in galleries and museums around the world. At present, 13 of his hacked video games, altered feature films, and Internet manipulations are wowing viewers in a survey show at the Netherlands Media Art Institute in Amsterdam.

Besides the crazy cats, the survey show — titled Depreciated, in reference to software that is no longer supported — includes several standout works. Permanent Vacation (2007) consists of a pair of computers that continuously message one another emails that read “Out of Office” until their hard drives fill up and crash, which could take 24 years. Self-Playing Sony Playstation 1 Bowling (2008) is a bowling game that has been modified to endlessly throw gutter balls, and the completely comical Untitled Translation Exercise (2006) is a dubbed version of Richard Linklater’s cult film Dazed and Confused. Arcangel had the staff of an Indian outsourcing company read the parts in English, but their unique Indian accents turn it into a surreal production.

Another film appropriation that makes something new of the original is Colors (2006), which abstracts Dennis Hopper’s film about LA gang violence into vertical color bars. Meanwhile, early works on view — such as I Shot Andy Warhol (2002), which employs an arcade-game hand pistol to shoot at Andy, Pope John Paul II, Flava Flav, and Colonel Sanders; Super Mario Clouds V2K3 (2002), which reduces the old Nintendo video game to a minimal field of moving clouds; and the simple landscape pulled from Japanese Driving Game (2004) — show the artist at his media-manipulating best.

An experimental artist with no pretension about whether he is making art or just having fun, Arcangel has found a way to use technology to express himself and, in the process, to ironically mirror culture at large.

Cory Arcangel: Depreciated continues at the Netherlands Media Art Institute through November 14.

Cory Arcangel, Drei Klavierstücke, op. 11, 2009, Projection from a digital source, Dimensions variable, Duration: 16 minutes, Edition of five, Courtesy Team Gallery, New York

Cory Arcangel, Super Mario Clouds v2k3, 2002, Handmade hacked Nintendo Game system and cartridge, Dimensions variable, Edition of five, Courtesy Team Gallery, New York

Cory Arcangel, I don't want to spoil the party, 2007, Projection from a digital source, Dimensions variable, Edition of five, Courtesy Team Gallery, New York

Cory Arcangel, I Shot Andy Warhol, 2002, Handmade hacked video game, game system, and gun, Dimensions variable, Edition of five, Courtesy Team Gallery, New York

Cory Arcangel, Sweet 16, 2006, Projection from a digital source, Dimensions variable, Edition of five, Courtesy Team Gallery, New York

Cory Arcangel, Japanese Driving Game, 2004, Handmade hacked Nintendo FamiCom cartridge, Edition of five, Courtesy Team Gallery, New York

Cory Arcangel, Untitled Translation Exercise, 2006, In collaboration with Ben Jones and friend, Projection from a digital source, Dimensions variable, Edition of five, Courtesy Team Gallery, New York

Cory Arcangel, Colors, 2006, Courtesy Team Gallery, New York

But here’s an important caveat: the film was helmed by Richard Linklater, the director behind Before Sunrise and Dazed and Confused. There’s also an extremely enthusiastic blurb from Roger Ebert — unless you take into account that there aren’t that many movies about “the theater” in the first place. Check out the trailer for yourself and see what you think.

Flavorpill: I found this line from the press release for the event interesting: “Generation X is forever identifiable with the ’90s, but with many members of the subsequent Generation Y identifying with ’90s signifiers.” It’s true. A lot of people who don’t “belong” to Gen X think they do. Why?

Aaron Lake Smith: I think people identify with the ’90s because the 2000s have been, culturally, kind of a nonevent — the Mac laptop and the cellular telephone seem sterile compared to the sweetness of the signifiers of the past era like walking around trying to find a payphone late at night, girls in flannel and combat boots, or riding the Greyhound bus to visit someone you hardly know. All these things still happen, but now they have some element of kitsch to them. Nowadays you don’t have to pick one identity like a “punk” or “b-boy” and stick with it — thanks to the Internet, you can be a little bit of everything, pick and choose pieces from different identities. It seems like the social, economic, and cultural fragmentation of the 2000s has left people feeling somewhat adrift and the closest thing to cling to happens to be the ’90s.

FP: My favorite year of the decade was 1996. What was yours and why?

ALS: I was a half-conscious tween for the first half of the ’90s and a disturbed teenager for the second half. In 1999, when I was in high school, I vividly remember turning on the news and eating a Pop Tart and watching the images from the WTO riots in Seattle — kids in black smashing Starbucks windows — it really blew my mind. I was like, wow — I want in on some of that. It turned out that all those people were right. It was like they were prophets, and it just took another 10 years for our make-believe economy to crumble.

FP: What were you like in high school?

ALS: I dyed my hair blue in high school and spent most of my time driving around in a beat up car with a ragtag group of friends looking for things to steal or vandalize, going to shows, and drinking cheap warm vodka. I was voted
“most creative” — I had two periods of art and my art teacher liked me so much that she let me skip them every day — during this time I would walk off campus to the Barnes and Noble across the street every day. I spent most of my adolescence lying around in that parking lot, reading magazines, drinking Frappuccinos, and staring at the wall.

FP: If you had to resurrect one piece of ’90s slang, what would it be and why?

ALS:It seems like some things about the ’90s might be better left dead.

FP: What about the music? If you had to pick a handful of albums that define that decade for you, what artists does it include?

Icky Mettle by Archers of Loaf
One Foot in the Grave by Beck
In on the Kill Taker by Fugazi
Honky by The Melvins
Flipper and Crimpshrine by The Smoking Popes

FP: If you could live in any city in the world right now, but you’d have to go back to the 1990, where would you pick?

ALS: Austin, Texas, as re-imagined and canonized in Richard Linklater’s movie Slacker. [Editor's note: You can watch the whole thing on Hulu here.]

FP: Have you finished writing your first novel, Mother Asphalt, yet? Where did the name come from?

ALS: The title and to some degree the subject of the novel is about embracing your fate and time even when it feels like you’ve been born decades or centuries too late. I often find myself fantasizing about living in America in the 1800s or before it was colonized by Europeans when it was still an unbroken green continent, a garden of Eden — the sad reality is that people my age and younger were born into an America of parking lots and shopping centers. It’s strange to be nostalgic for pure gone things “nature” or “the ’90s” or “New York City in the ’70s” when they’re gone and never coming back. When I’m an old man and all Americans speak Chinese or everyone has an iPhone installed in their ear, my fond memories of purity will be of things like the freshly paved freeway, the suburban drainage creek, the sound of a 56K modem connecting.

FP: Have you ever come across a stranger reading Big Hands? If so, did you approach them?

ALS: I have a memory of a movie where some middle-aged, failed writer sees a beautiful woman pick up his book in a store and goes over to talk to her —of course it works out badly. This is how I imagine all unexpected writer/reader interactions are must go — with the voyeuristic reader feeling like they’re being caught in the act by the unbearable and desperate writer, popping out of nowhere and shouting, “Surprise!”