Showing posts with label Censorship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Censorship. Show all posts

Sunday, May 19, 2013

Video Of the Week: Biting Elbows

Believe it or not, being Biting Elbows' frontman is not Ilya Naishuller's actual job - it's his hobby. His actual job is to make movies, which is kind of obvious when you watch his band's videos, which he writes and directs.

Heavily inspired by Reservoir Dogs (guys in suits with guns, men tied to chairs getting their heads blown up), Bad Motherfucker (yes, a Pulp Fiction reference) is filmed as a first-person shooter adventure with a GoPro camera and looks like it cost a shitload of money to make, although the director grudgingly admits it actually cost far less. It is the sequel to their first video, The Stampede (unofficially titled Insane Office Escape).

The band's videos have gone viral and so successful that they've managed to open for such major-label rock juggernauts as Guns N' Roses and Placebo, masters of epic videos and awesomely violent ones, respectively.

Says Naishuller:
"The idea was very simple. To shoot a very fun, exciting and relentless five minutes of action that can be enjoyed, with tongue firmly in cheek, for all its guilty excess and irreverence. Nothing more. Nothing less. I hope we have succeeded in our mission."
Mission accomplished, dear so. He'd also like to add that no animals were harmed during the making of this piece of art, a stuffed one was used at the beginning.

Biting Elbows - 'Bad Motherfucker' Official Music Video from Ilya Naishuller on Vimeo.

Friday, June 22, 2012

Video Of The Week: Atari Teenage Riot

Six months ago already since I last made Atari Teenage Riot my Video Of The Week...

This time, I'm featuring a video that was banned from most TV stations for being... too violent. The same TV stations that give away free tickets to The Avengers or Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer...




If you've ever worked in a cubicle, and have ever thought there could be something wrong with the world, and don't think you quite qualify to become Neo (from The Matrix), this could be the video for you.

Friday, February 10, 2012

Oh, No, Canada! (Part Deux!)

So two weeks have passed since Bill C-11 was the hot debate and, well... Stephen Harper's Conservatives want to control the internet even more: by threatening to cut off anyone for no good reason, and by restricting access to some websites - even those one might be the owner of.

More and more, it looks like the Ideal World for those fuckers would be one in which companies are completely deregulated and people - humans - are enslaved to both companies and the government, with laws restricting everything from the food we eat, the way we think, the shit we're allowed to do in our own homes, the stuff we read, the entertainment we watch.

6 fucking months into power and they have turned this once-proud, once-a-world-example-of-freedom into the worst police state George Orwell couldn't even have thought about imagining.

Sign it, please.

Saturday, January 28, 2012

Oh, No, Canada!

Stephen Harper's Conservatives, in a mere 6 months since actually taking power, has already changed the face of Canadian politics - and it's only getting worse: Bill C-11 formerly Bill-32 - makes the American SOPA bill look tame in comparison.

Dear They compiled this short list of just some of its provisions:

Like your PVR? You can’t keep it under C-11.
Like ripping CDs to your iPod? Say bye-bye.
Hey, do you want to be able to unlock your $500 smartphone and take it to a provider less dedicated to violating your wallet? That won’t be allowed either.
Did you get accused of internet piracy but no evidence has been presented and a trial date hasn’t even been set? Under C-11 your ISP will now be forced to terminate your internet access.
Yeah. And lazy Canadian bastards, too busy watching the NHL All Star Game, or too cold to go outside and demonstrate or riot will politely just bend over and turn the other cheek. We will let this asshole completely change our way of life in just a couple of years, turning our ''socialist Hell'' into a police state governed by lawless companies while humans have no rights whatsoever... ah the beauty of ''the free market''!

There are less than two weeks left to make our voices heard. Click here and save yourselves:
http://www.ccer.ca/canadian-copyright-reform/canadian-copyright-reform-back-with-vengeance/

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Video Of The Week: Katy Perry Feat. Snoop Dogg

Disclaimer: it's everywhere. It's the song of the summer, like it or not. And the video is absolutely beautiful, especially on 'mute'.

And Snoop Dogg's cameo is yet another where he does little else but spell his fucking name out (seriously, Snoop, we know you can spell your name, but we also know you can release amazing fucking records like Doggystyle and Tha Last Meal and can participate in great collabs like on The Chronic and The Chronic 2001, could you at least try to repeat once in a while, like, say, once a year? please?)

The song is pretty much the West Coast's answer to previous Video Of The Week Jay-Z's and Alicia Keys' Empire State Of Mind, where they replace the grittiness and neon lights with candy, pastels and sunshine, and they chose the right ambassadors for it, although the song itself is not up to par, in my opinion. Sure, at least it's pretty much free of autotune, which is pretty much a blessing in itself, but my ears are still bleeding from its pseudo-techno/90s dance sounds from when I last heard the song almost a week ago.

In any event, there's no escaping this fucking song, so no point in trying. YouTube it here; they don't allow me to embed it here.

Maybe I should have boycotted it for that reason alone. Meh, too late, I wrote the blurb. Here are not-so-subtle pictures of the video...


Friday, April 30, 2010

Video Of The Week: M.I.A.

Let me start by saying I'm not a fan of M.I.A. I think her songs, even though they incorporate disparate parts of different musical styles from different cultures does not sound cohesive to me; instead of sounding like she is in control of what she releases as her pieces of art, it seems more like she is a victim who is not allowed to blend her materials in the way, say, a Beck would.

When she turns more instrumental, more hard/techno, I'm even less of a fan. And it's what she does in this song.

But it's the Song Of The Week because it's the most talked-about video of the week, seeing as even a ''free'' platform like YouTube (owned by free-speech merchants Google) have pulled it for its ''excessive and suggestive violence''. What. The. Fuck.

2010. In a world, in a time-space continuum that is going forward, not backwards, in a world where the rationale for going to war is that the other country is ''backwards-thinking'' and ''so-14th-century'', we still censor music? Fuck that shit. That's the first step in reverting back to the 1800s, re-installing slavery, taking away women's right to vote (and equal pay, obviously), it's the Middle Ages with nukes, no more, no less.

It's music. Art. It expresses an opinion, and in this case, the opinion was a metaphor for where we're going as a Civilization, that if you separate people by religion, skin colour, hair colour - or any other way - it is wrong; that we must not let it happen. It is expertly filmed, too, almost reminiscent of this year's Academy Award winner, The Hurt Locker.

It's important to help this video reach as many people as it can.

Permanent link is here.