Category: Uncategorized (Page 234 of 1086)

 

The starter

‘Rube Goldberg is best known for a series of popular cartoons depicting complex gadgets that perform simple tasks in indirect, convoluted ways. Now known as Rube Goldberg machines, these contraptions, devices, or apparatuses are deliberately over-engineered or overdone machines that use an elaborate set of arms, wheels, gears, handles, cups and rods, put in motion by balls, canary cages, pails, boots, bathtubs, paddles and live animals to perform a very simple task in a very complex fashion, usually including a chain reaction.

‘For 55 years Goldberg’s Pulitzer Prize winning cartoon drawings of complicated machines and gadgets satirized government policies, which he saw as excessive. His cartoons combined simple machines and common household items to create complex wacky and diabolically logical machines that accomplished mundane and trivial tasks. Rube Goldberg is the only proper name included in Webster’s Dictionary as an adjective, referring to “accomplishing by extremely complex, roundabout means what seemingly could be done simply.”‘ — rube machine.com

 

The Official Rube Goldberg Website
Mouse Trap Contraptions
Mouse Trap @ Hasbro
Peter Fischli David Weiss
The Rube Goldberg Machine Contest
High School Rube Goldberg Science Class Contest
Domino Day
Rowland Emett
‘Tower’ @ LoveJordan

 

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Mouse Trap
‘Mouse Trap is a board game first published by Ideal in 1963 for two or more players. Over the course of the game, players at first cooperate to build a working Rube Goldberg-like mouse trap. Once the mouse trap has been built, players turn against each other, attempting to trap opponents’ mouse-shaped game pieces. Each player is represented by a mouse-shaped game piece which travels along a non-continuous, roughly square-shaped path around the game board from the start to a continuous loop at the end. The object of the game is to trap all of one’s opponent’s mice using the game’s Rube Goldberg-style mouse trap. The trap begins with a crank which turns a set of gears. This begins a series of stages which ends in a cage being lowered over the “cheese wheel” space on the board, which is one of six spaces in the ending loop of the game path.’ — BoardGameGeek

 

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The Westing Estate
The 2011 National Collegiate Rube Goldberg Machine Contest winner the University of Wisconsin-Stout. The task of their machine is to water a plant. The UW-Stout team’s machine entitled “The Westing Estate” takes 135 steps to complete this task and includes a church, mine shaft, gazebo, gardens, water pump and water wheel, two catapults and about two dozen steel ball tracks.

 

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Peter Fischli & David Weiss Der Lauf der Dinge
‘Der Lauf der Dinge (The Way Things Go) is a 1987 art film by the Swiss artist duo Peter Fischli and David Weiss. It documents a long causal chain assembled of everyday objects, resembling a Rube Goldberg machine. The machine is in a warehouse, about 100 feet long, and incorporates materials such as tires, trash bags, ladders, soap, oil drums, and gasoline. Fire and pyrotechnics are used as chemical triggers. The film is nearly 29 minutes, 45 seconds long, but some of that is waiting for something to burn, or slowly slide down a ramp.’ — Icarus Films

 

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Rube Goldberg Machine… But With GUNS!!!
‘I wonder how many hours of Matt’s life have been spent wondering how to avoid publicly committing a felony.’ — Zomboinie

 

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The Rube Goldberg Machine Contest
‘The Rube Goldberg Machine Contest, held annually at Purdue University in Indiana and organized by the Phi Chapter of Theta Tau, a national engineering fraternity, bring Goldberg’s cartoons to life as a way of helping students transcend traditional ways of looking at problems, taking them into the intuitive chaotic realm of imagination. The resulting inventions are collections of bits and pieces, parts of now useless machines, cobbled together to achieve an innovative imaginative, yet somehow logical contraption to meet the annual contest challenge. Previous challenges have included dispensing an appropriate amount of hand sanitizer, watering a plant, replacing an incandescent light bulb with a more energy efficient design, assembling a hamburger, juicing an orange shredding 5 sheets of paper one-by-one, casting a ballot, peeling an apple, and putting a stamp on an envelope.’ — rubemachine.com

 

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School Science Projects
‘seekmariaXD Thanks to your video im doing an amazing 5th grade project I tweeked some things to suit me and changed it up a little butthanks to you I actually have a base on what to start with. superman3343 That sounds great 😀 u should send me a vid when its done daveedwards3324234 This is pointless. There’s supposed to be something cool that happens at the end of it. I built a machine in 6th grade that lit small fires at various points around a certain area, each of which cooked a different meal, and one of which began a process of roasting a chicken. And in the end we all sat down and ate the shit like men, with our hands. Ha! I muse at your small minded experiment. superman3343 Do you feel proud of yourself? 😀 halfbuc you are awesome (not) MadameSponge Guys leave him alone. Hes a kid, calm down. geez. tommy560987 hello my name is fucky Mc fuckerstun superman3343 whatever. I don’t need to take this from some 8 year old on the internet.’ — youtube

 

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World’s largest Rube Goldberg machine
‘The Purdue Society of Professional Engineers team smashed its own Guinness world record for largest Rube Goldberg machine with a 300-step behemoth that flawlessly accomplished the simple task of blowing up and popping a balloon. The team spent more than 5,000 hours constructing the machine that accomplished every task ever assigned in the competition’s 25-year history, including peeling an apple, juicing an orange, toasting bread, making a hamburger, changing a light bulb, loading a CD and sharpening a pencil.’ — Purdue University

 

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Domino Day
‘Domino Day was a world record attempt for the highest number of toppling domino stones, organized from 1998-2009 by Endemol Netherlands. Together with Weijers Domino Productions of Robin Paul Weijers, also known as Mr. Domino, parties teamed up to set a new world record. The production was mainly organized at the WTC-Expo in Leeuwarden, Netherlands and broadcast live on television across Europe. The current and standing world record of 4,491,863 toppled dominoes was set by a group of German dominoes enthusiasts at the final Domino Day in 2009. At the height of Domino Day’s popularity in 2002, the television broadcast attracted over 41 million viewers.’ — DominoFans.com

Over FOUR Million Dominoes – It’s A New World Record

New record – 4.345.027 dominoes!

New World Record… 4.491.863!

 

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Clockwork
‘This is Clockwork, my fifth major K’nex ball machine, and my largest and most complex K’nex structure to date. It took 8 months to build in my bedroom, has over 40,000 pieces, over 450 feet of track, 21 different paths, 8 motors, 5 lifts, and a one-of-a-kind computer-controlled crane, as well as two computer-controlled illuminated K’nex balls.’ — Austin Granger

 

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Rowland Emett’s Dream Machines
‘Rowland Emett was an English cartoonist and constructor of whimsical kinetic sculpture. Much of his career was spent designing and supervising the building of what he called his “things” – always with silly names such as The Featherstone-Kite Openwork Basketweave Mark Two Gentleman’s Flying Machine, two copies of which exist. In the mid-1960s he was commissioned by Honeywell to create a mechanical computer, which he named The Forget-Me-Not Computer. In 1968 he designed the elaborate inventions of Caractacus Potts (played by Dick Van Dyke) for the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. In 1973 his water powered musical clock, The Aqua Horological Tintinnabulator, was installed on the lower floor of the Victoria Centre, Nottingham, UK. His larger works, such as Emettland, went on extended tours, ending up in prestigious venues such as the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.’ — mech.mcmaster

 

 

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A machine to destroy an iPhone
‘The Rube Goldberg machine Joseph Herscher created to snooze an iPhone involves a toy car, a toy train, a toy tank, a broom, a hammer, a bucket of water and a catapult.’ — cult of mac

 

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Time Machine
The 2011 Purdue University Rube Goldberg machine shattered the world record for most steps ever successfully completed by such a machine. In 244 steps the “Time Machine” traces the history of the world from Big Bang to the Apocalypse before accomplishing the assigned everyday task of watering a flower. The record has been sanctioned by the Guinness Book of World Records and the World Records Academy.

 

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World’s Slowest Rube Goldberg Machine

 

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Marble Mountain
It has so far taken him three years and consumed almost his entire garage, but Ben Tardif has not yet finished his unbelievably intricate marble machine. A video shows his incredible hand-made contraption in action after years of painstaking work from the Californian builder. In the video, uploaded to YouTube by Ben on March 31, hundreds of silver marbles are hoisted up to the top of the mountain by a giant winch. In total 25 sections slot together to form a one-of-a-kind sculpture where every element is themed along its creator’s life. The marbles race along the course, fly over ski jumps, rocket round a rollercoaster, cross over a tiny rope bridge and trickle through a giant castle. Everything is custom-made and built almost entirely from wood, and Ben had to move his creation to a small warehouse after it got too big for his apartment after a year-and-a-half.

 

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Rube Goldberg machines by DoodleChaos
‘Hey everybody! I make rube goldbergs, chain reactions, and a bunch of crazy stuff. Tell me what you think! I believe that short complicated rube goldbergs can be more entertaining then long boring ones.’ — DoodleChaos

‘Piano’

‘The Easy Life’

Pong Trick Shots

 

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Amazing Rube Goldberg type machine to fix ramen for dinner
‘I love how Japanese announcers always sound so excited.’ — Ninjujitsu

 

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A chain reaction machine with only toilet paper tricks!
‘As toilet paper has become a meme in this quarantine, I thought it would be fun to make a chain reaction with it to spend time. First I had to go out and buy it, and be judged by people… But I took the packs one by one every day and there was plenty of it in the store, no shortage because of me haha. It is difficult to make a chain reaction with toilet paper because they roll unpredictably because of imperfections, and they’re all different.’ — Kaplamino

 

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The Swish Machine: 70 Step Basketball Trickshot
‘This outdoor Rube Goldberg Machine goes around my entire yard, and swishes a basketball shot after 70 steps. This video was filmed in one take, meaning there are absolutely no hidden cuts or edits. The machine took a month to build and another month to successfully work.’ — Creezy

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** T. J., Ho, T. J. ‘Dark Horse’ is, I think, the only film of his I haven’t seen. Okay, I need to polish the oeuvre off. Oh, yeah, ‘High Risk’. That was quite a good anthology, and kind of an influential thing back in the day. Volume 2 isn’t quite as strong, but it’s worth finding.** Jack Skelley, Those photos of completed vanished, ashen Lahaina are really mind-boggling. God, just awful. How was the Fair? Did you buy shit? Was ‘FoKA’ amongst the goods? Insta, of course, oh well. I’ll try to divine it. ** Misanthrope, Knowing you to the degree that I do, I think you would really like ‘Happiness’. I could be wrong, but I think you should plop down in front of it. American English is the wildest, messiest, most unstable language. I love it. I’m so glad I am a writer of it. We do get killer thunder/rainstorms here. And they usually only last about 15 minutes and then blue skies again. It sounds you have done birthdays as well as they can be done. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Thanks for making your opinion crystal clear. You’re hardly alone in that assessment, as you certainly well know. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi. Yeah, ‘Happiness’ is something. And what a great screenplay, wow. Envy. Well, a loss via a last minute penalty is harsh, but it doesn’t damn the team at least, right? ** Nightcrawler, Hi! Good to see you! You’re most welcome. You good? What’s up? ** oliver, Greetings and salutations, oliver! I can email you my mailing address. I’ll do that when I’m through here for the day. Thank you, I’m excited to see your zine. Best to you. ** Damien Ark, Hi, D. People hate it? More than they hate his other ones? Awesome to see you, as always. ** Mark, Hi! Precisely about Efteling. You nailed it. Plus they have an actual, really focused overall vision of what the place should be, and they don’t stint on the detailing. Etc. Oh, wow, you leave tomorrow! Great luck getting through the bag packing and arranging to have your house plants watered and all of that preemptory stuff. If I don’t talk to you before, max everything out. ** Bill, My suspicion is that he has a hard time getting his films financed, and I assume that’s why he has ended up making sequels to his most successful films. But I don’t know. I think there’s something of his in the works. ** John Newton, Hi, John. I’m doing reasonably well, you? Oh, yes, I read about that exhibition. I do know a bunch of the artists’ work, and I used know a few of them personally. Should be really something. I’m way out of the mainstream film world, but your friend’s assessment seem pretty right. I hope to always make films with small enough budgets that none of that bullshit comes into play. That’s a link to ‘Bruno’, yes? Okay, I’ll watch it. Thank you. When I lived in Holland, the popular saying there was ‘The French live to eat, the Dutch eat to live.’ Uh, no, Yury doesn’t eat any Russian food that I know of. He’s very vegan and eats a lot of grains and fruit and things. I’m going to have to go find a copy of ‘Idols’ and find that poem. I’m blanking, but it sounds like me. The friend who claimed that about Sade did go to a kind of experimental-ish school for rich kids, but, even so, I’m 99.9% sure he was just trying to protect his reputation with me. Have a swell start to your week. ** Probably, male, Hey, there! Really nice to see you! No, I don’t know Htrk – Work. That’s very cool to hear. I will go find it. Thanks. Most of the classics I like are too much about the language to be filmable, but, in the realm of the seemingly doable, I think that even though there’ve been a million films based on it, a really interesting film could be made of ‘Tom Sawyer’ maybe. I’ll check my email. I’m really, really behind on my mail, sorry. You good? ** Steve Erickson, Yes, the transgressive had its day. I do think we’re ripe for a revival given all the scaredy-cats out there. Great luck with The Wire obviously. That would be amazing. I’m not sure about The Quietus. Hm. That would a lot of fun. I greatly envy you going to that Anthology program. That sounds utterly dreamy. How was it? ** Darb, Cool: you liking it. My weekend was alright, all in all. Yours? I did not know that about the gloves, yikes. Yeah, I got my head split open with an axe when I was 11, so I had heavy surgery pre-80s. I … think I’m okay. ‘Old’ isn’t my favorite word, ha ha, but, you know, what can I do? It’s cool. The short fiction collection is kind of on the more sort transgressive side of what I do, but that’s the only commonality, I guess. Big up, big Monday! ** Cody Goodnight, Hi. I think I’m ok. Wow, I’d have to dwell in memory to pull up favorite ‘Twilight Zone’ episodes. That cornfield one is amazing. There’s one with a talking ventriloquist dummy that I remember liking. And, of course, duh, the bookworm post-apocalypse one. ‘Kickassia’ is way off my list, thanks. Boredoms are cool. I’m finally going to have the hopefully cheap thrill of seeing the new ‘Mission: Impossible’ movie today with a cheap thrills-seeking friend. Wish me luck, as I wish you all the luck with your impending daylight. ** Charalampos, Hi. God, insomnia is the worst. Sorry. As far as I know, ‘Closer’ is the only book of mine they’re returning to print. Sure would be nice because I think all of my books are o.o.p. in the UK. I’m not so fond of using the blog to promote my own work, but thanks, and I’ll think about a related post. Everyone, New set of poems online by our very own Charalampos aka Charalampos Tzanakis here. Hi from very slightly too warm Paris. ** malcolm, Hi! He’s your #1. Score! Since his films can’t really cost all that much money to make, relatively speaking, I don’t understand why he can’t seem to get funding. But, you know, the same with John Waters. What kind of insane, greedy world is the mainstream film world, I ask you? How did the short film premiere go? That’s very exciting! Will it get seeable by us punters at some point? I’m a mess, and yet I’m pretty happy too, if that commiseration helps. No, the strikes have no effect on ‘RT’. It happily got shot a bit before all of that came down. The post is going really well apart from the fact that we have zero funding and are having to do almost everything ourselves or by begging pros to help. But, yeah, we’re very excited about the film. Can’t wait to get it completely finished. I don’t know Calvin Westra, but now I will. Thanks! Super lovely to see you! Stick around when/if you can and want. ** Okay. Today the blog tries to pull up some shining examples of the Rube Goldberg effect. See you tomorrow.

* (restored/expanded)

 

‘Todd Solondz walks through the door of a Cafe on 12th Street in Manhattan, looking, apart from his trademark lemon-yellow converse all stars, like a person in disguise. He wears a floppy khaki sun hat and oversized shades. As he walks through the room, he peels off the sunglasses and replaces them with equally large eyeglasses with thick, retro frames. He yanks off the hat to reveal his hair, which is gray and thinning and bordering on mad scientist. He looks, perhaps, like an oddball character in a Todd Solondz film. The waitress recognizes him and greets him warmly, and he does the same. He’s a memorable presence. Appearance aside, he sounds a bit like a Jewish grandmother, his voice comically nasal, his words unhurried and elongated by a childhood in New Jersey, an accent that 30 years in New York City has failed to undo.

‘Talking to Solondz, his brilliance is quickly apparent. In interviews about his films, when prompted to make some sort of analysis about the meaning of his work, he’s fond of giving a sort of verbal shrug, saying “Look, I’m not an academic,” before following through with something about the “infantilization of the modern man” that sounds decidedly erudite. Solondz teaches film at NYU, and it’s easy to imagine students rushing to record his words—he’s one of those people whose casual discussion of craft is effortlessly mind expanding. He is especially likable for his openness and dry self deprecation, speaking freely about his neuroses and personality flaws. He has referred to himself as “socially maladroit” and considers the experience of being on set and shooting his films to be nightmarish, a constant state of crisis. “I feel like my obituary is going to read ‘Mr. Solondz collapsed on the third day of shooting,’ ” he joked, unsmiling. Still, he’s praised for being an “actor’s director” with a talent for figuring out exactly what each actor needs from him in order to deliver the best performance within them. He also has a reputation for being exceedingly hands-on. In an interview within the DVD extras for Life During Wartime, Shirley Henderson recalls Solondz spending several hours with her in a salon while she was getting her hair done for the part of Joy Jordan, making sure it was just right. She also spoke of the physical proximity he keeps during shooting, joking that if he could be underneath her chair at that moment, he would be.

‘The controversial content in his work has naturally triggered a fascination for many about the director and his motivations, but for the most part he declines to self analyze. Solondz grew up in a Jewish household within a middle class New Jersey enclave of ranch houses. The second youngest of four kids, he insists that he had a relatively normal childhood. “Every family has its complications, but I don’t think mine stood out in any particularly memorable way against any other families in the neighborhood.” Solondz’s mother is a musician who attended Juliard before marrying Solondz’s father, an MIT graduate. He also considers himself to have been a relatively normal, and certainly untroubled, kid. “I was a pretty easy kid for my parents, I think. Never got into trouble. Didn’t make a girl pregnant, didn’t become a drug addict. Didn’t have car accidents. I went to Yale. I mean, you know, I was basically an easy polite little boy. I don’t think I had a bad boy streak in me.”

‘Although Solondz reigns over the black comedy corner of the independent film world, he considers himself to be a commercial director. It’s his treatment of his subjects, he explains, that falls beyond the parameters of the mainstream. He emphasizes that, for all the social and political commentary inherent in his work, at the end of the day it is meant to be entertainment, and he keeps his characters and narratives accessible enough that an 11-year-old would be able to understand what’s happening. “They might have a lot of questions about the social, sexual, political ramifications and so forth, but they would be able to follow the story.”’ — Maris James, Indiewire

 

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Stills

 

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Further

The Films of Todd Solondz
‘Todd Solondz: I’m Judd Apatow’s dark side’
‘Why is Todd Solondz returning to the film that nearly destroyed his career?’
‘Todd Solondz Looks Back on His Career’
Todd Solondz interviewed @ Tiny Mix Tapes
Podcast: ‘Todd Solondz Explains Later-Life Childhood’
Video: ‘The Ultimate Todd Solondz Tribute, in Three Songs’
‘Todd Solondz’s Toy Story: Director Denied at Toys”R”Us’
‘Todd Solondz’s Influence on American Independent Film’
Todd Solondz interviewed @ The A.V. Club
‘The Monstrous Masculine: Abjection And Todd Solondz’s Happiness

 

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Other

Todd Solondz: “My Movies Aren’t for Everyone”

Todd Solondz on independent film

In Conversation with Todd Solondz

Interview: Todd Solondz, Jordan Gelber, Selma Blair (Dark Horse)

 

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Interview
from The Believer

 

TODD SOLONDZ: You know what happened today? One of those giant roaches flew through the window into my apartment. I couldn’t believe it. At first I thought it was a bat.

SIGRID NUNEZ: A water bug! Oh, those are awful. Everyone’s afraid of them. But as far as I know, they’re harmless.

TS: Well, just the idea of having one flying around your house… Then of course I had to catch the thing and kill it.

SN: I was reading in bed once and I saw one run under the bed. I didn’t know what to do. I knew I couldn’t kill it. I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep.

TS: So what did you do?

SN: I took a double dose of sleeping pills.

TS: Oh, no! But what I can’t figure out is this: I live on the eighth floor. How did it get up there? Does this mean, way up in the sky, roaches are flying around?

SN: My guess is it crawled part of the way, saw your open window, and flew in. You need to get screens.

But enough about cockroaches. Let’s talk about “Solondzian cruelty,” a phrase I just saw in a review of someone else’s movie. Every time you make a movie you get hit with the same mud: mean, cruel, perverse, hateful, misanthropic, et cetera.

TS: Yep. Every time. [Big sigh]

SN: You are one of the least cruel people I’ve ever known. So what’s going on?

TS: I think people have a lot of trouble figuring out what I’m trying to do. In particular, people have trouble understanding where I stand in relation to my characters, and very often this gets reduced to me making vicious fun of them. Ever since Welcome to the Dollhouse, whenever a new movie comes out with characters who are portrayed as “geeky” or grotesque or who are humiliated in some way, someone is sure to compare them to mine.

One thing I want to say: I don’t like victim stories and I don’t write them. For example, I never saw Dawn Wiener [the main character in Dollhouse] as a victim, or intended Dollhouse as a victim story. That is definitely a misunderstanding between me and a part of my audience. To be honest, I am often unsettled by the responses some people have had to my movies, and that includes many people who like them. There can be a blurry line between laughing at the expense of a character and laughing at the recognition of something painful and true. But blurry as it may be, it is nevertheless unmistakable, and sometimes the laughter I hear makes me wince. “Why do you make movies about such ugly people?” I’ve been asked. Well, I don’t see them as ugly. And this is why when Storytelling came out, I said: “My movies are not for everybody, especially for people who like them.”

Another unfortunate thing is the way some people see me as dissecting my characters in some kind of heartless, coldblooded, analytical way, when in truth making these movies is a passionate, intensely emotional experience for me. I’m detached from the characters only to the degree that I have to be in order to write honestly about them. I admit there’s an element of brutality in all my work—it’s part of the truth about human existence I always want to explore—but the last thing I’m trying to do is put on some kind of freak show, inviting people to get off on other people’s pain and humiliation.

SN: But there are also plenty of people who find your attitude toward your characters empathetic and compassionate. They might not crop up as often as cruel, but I’ve seen the words tender and poetic and sweet and even spiritual used to describe your films. And I’m thinking how the portrait of the pedophile in Happiness was described by the movie’s producer as “nonjudgmental,” which is certainly accurate, but for me and many others it was also an extremely compassionate portrait, because of the way you allowed this character to fall to the very bottom, morally speaking, without ever stripping him of his humanity.

I think what confuses people is that the films are all black or—since I know you reject that description—sad comedies. If we’re laughing while watching these characters suffer, it can certainly feel—much as you don’t want this—as though we were laughing at them. And though I know you want to have it both ways, not everyone in the audience is able to escape the guilty feeling of having belly laughed at someone else’s pain. Then there’s the matter of casting.

TS: Yes. Something that drives me crazy is when I hear people talk about some of the actors in my movies, or about someone I’m considering casting, and they say, “Oh, that person is perfect because he or she is so grotesque, so disgusting.” And they assume I share these feelings.

And that reminds me. There was this one particular guy who interviewed me once and who really seemed to like me when we met. Then I read his piece, and he just went on and on, about how funny-looking I was, you know, and how I was the worst dresser, making me out to be this bizarre freaky little character, in a way that I just wanted to punch him. Then there was this reviewer who loved Dollhouse but couldn’t stop himself from saying the most awful things about the way I look and about the way Heather Matarazzo [the actor who plays Dawn Wiener] looks. Someone in the audience at a screening one time yelled “Freak!” when I walked onstage, and there are people who, without blinking an eye, refer to me as “the geek director.” All these people—to me, they’re exactly like the seventh-graders in Dollhouse whose cruelty I was portraying. And they don’t have a clue!

When I want to show the kind of meanness people are capable of, to make it believable I find I have to tone it down. It’s in real life that people are over the top. And if I have a certain view of how people behave in this regard, it’s because I’ve been a target for a certain kind of comment all my life. Perfect strangers have always felt free to say things to me in the street, or shout things from passing cars.

 

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Todd Solondz’s 12 films

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Feelings (1984)
‘Todd Solondz’s first film shot with sound, Feelings is a two and a half minute movie made as an NYU film school assignment in 1984. Solondz himself takes the lead role of a sensitive young man who finds he can no longer endure life without his beloved (Jan Meredith). Photographed by Andy Day, the film is set to Todd Solondz’s personal rendition of the song “Feelings” by Morris Albert.’ — Mohammed Alhnaid

the entirety

 

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Babysitter (1984)
‘This absurdist short film by director Todd Solondz follows a young male protagonist as he recalls the babysitters of his youth.‘ — Geoff

the entirety

 

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Schatt’s Last Shot (1985)
‘A young Todd Solondz stars in the 10-minute short as geeky high schooler Ezra Schatt, a neurotic, primitive headcase of the young Woody Allen variety. Buried under thick, unseemly glasses and an endlessly dazed expression, Ezra’s worst enemy is basketball. Unable to make a single basket under the brutal pressures of his vulgar gym teacher, Ezra also fails at both impressing the cheerleader of his dreams and realizing his aspirations of attending MIT.’ — Geoff

the entirety

 

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Fear, Anxiety, & Depression (1989)
‘Despite Solondz’ dismissive attitude towards his debut, Fear, Anxiety and Depression is a great and decidedly funny movie (though perhaps not quite up to later films, especially technically), which deserves to be seen, esp. by anyone who considers him/herself a Solondz fan. Since Solondz’ biggest issue seems to have been creative control, perhaps a “director’s cut” – though obviously too late to change many problems – would at least allow Solondz a closer representation of the film he wanted… certainly a proper (indeed, special edition) DVD release of this film is called for in any case.’ — toddsolondz.com

the entirety

 

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Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995)
‘The title of Todd Solondz’s 1995 film, Welcome to the Dollhouse, serves as ironic commentary on main character Dawn Wiener’s situation (mc domain-universe)-neither welcome nor a pretty doll (mc thematic issue-attraction), she is put in her place and must stay there. Dawn is the eleven-year-old middle child of a middle class family in suburbia, New Jersey. Older brother Mark is a high school computer geek who concentrates on his college resume (objective story focus-certainty); younger sister Missy is a blonde ballerina and apple of mother’s eye. Dollhouse is a psychological (os domain) study of what happens to those who have ideas (os goal-conceiving) about what makes them unique-ideas that differ from the accepted (os solution) norm. They fail (story outcome).’ — Dramatica.com

the entire film

Excerpt

 

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Happiness (1998)
‘The thematic thread that permeates Todd Solondz’s Happiness is deviant masculinity, and each male in the film is burdened with a particular sexual dysfunction that gradually comes to light through displays of perverse or obscene behaviour. Situated among them is Billy Maplewood, the adolescent boy whose burgeoning sexuality emerges as the primary focus of the narrative. In mapping Billy’s horrific trajectory towards maturity, the film’s project is an abject representation of the specific rites of passage that he must undergo in order to accede to manhood. As both an application of, and a re-imagining of Creed’s concepts, Happiness addresses its theme of abject masculinity through the generic conventions of the horror film, adopting a fluid strategy that adheres to, and then traverses the boundaries of her thesis. Masculinity is constructed as monstrous in terms of the very characteristics that shape Billy’s experience of becoming a man; characteristics that are revealed as inherent in the development of his sexual identity.’ — Adam P. Wadenius

Trailer

the entirety

 

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Storytelling (2001)
‘Todd Solondz returns with a characteristically scabrous dissection of the confused motives that can lie behind ‘true-to-life’ writing and documentary film-making. He offers two separate stories (‘Fiction’ and ‘Non-Fiction’) that unfold amid the sadly comical terrain of college and high school. In the first, a young female student has a stranger-than-fiction sexual encounter with her creative writing tutor. In the second, a struggling documentarian sets out to faithfully record the life and thoughts of an ordinary American adolescent, but finds himself irresistibly drawn to the exploitative possibilities of the material.’ — tsc

Trailer

Excerpt

TS on ‘Storytelling’

 

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Palindromes (2004)
‘The Todd Solondz problem will always be in our faces because that’s where he puts it. He doesn’t have the nyah-nyah attack of such punk auteurs as Larry Clark or Harmony Korine—just the opposite: I can’t think of a filmmaker who combines so much aggression with so little affect. But he’s one of the few writer-directors who can earn an NC-17 rating for a movie without nudity or profanity; his films are just so conceptually grotesque that you wouldn’t want to show them to anyone below the age of … I was going to write “40,” but that would be too glib. I actually respect Solondz’s purity of vision and thought Happiness worked beautifully as a sicko sitcom. I also respect his obstinacy: No matter how much his distributors plead for a slightly softer product, he’ll always show us the world through shit-colored glasses. Does Solondz deserve a rating of his own? Say, NR-DS—”Not recommended for persons depressed or suicidal”?’ — Slate

Trailer

the entirety

 

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Life During Wartime (2009)
‘Elegant opening credits, written as if it were calligraphy on a wedding invitation, yield to a couple in blunt close-up—unhappy, interracial, tearfully celebrating their anniversary in a shopping-mall restaurant. After an unfathomable exchange, he presents her with an antique bowl he found on eBay and, after reciting a guffaw-worthy litany of sins, promises to turn over a new leaf. The waitress appears, recognizes the sinner, freaks out, and spits in his tearful face. Violins herald the title: Life During Wartime. Solondz understands the misery of children. But does the filmmaker have compassion or contempt for his characters? Is it possible to feel both? Solondz’s sensibility has obvious affinities to such masters of cruelty as Neil LaBute or, particularly since A Serious Man, the Coen Brothers—but he is less smugly punitive and more obviously tormented. A humanist he’s not, but he does seem allergic to hypocrisy.’ — J. Hoberman

Trailer

Excerpts & interview

 

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Dark Horse (2012)
‘Dark Horse is a psychodrama in the literal sense: Much of it seemingly takes place in Abe’s mind. It’s a terrain cluttered with demons, in the form of feel-bad consumerism, fear of Muslims, sexual neuroses, hypochondria, paternal expectations, sibling competition (Abe’s brother is “marriage material” in every way that Abe is not) and relationships with mother figures that are both stifling and seductive. The origami-like narrative is precariously hinged on a trope borrowed from midcentury soap opera, but its dismantling of otherness is graceful. If “graceful” is not a word you associate with the auteur of Welcome to the Dollhouse and Happiness, you owe it to yourself to see what Solondz has been up to lately. Dark Horse is the most mature film of his career, and maybe the greatest.’ — LA Weekly

Trailer

Excerpt

Todd Solondz interviewed re: ‘Dark Horse’

 

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Excerpts from the 3013-3014 website course dialogue of the Global Union of Chinese Vassal States (G.U.C.V.S.) Cinema Academy (fall semester) (2013)
‘For this year’s Venice Film Festival, 70 renowned filmmakers made 60-90 second short films. Their concept: Future Reloaded. They that were screened at the festival and just uploaded to YouTube. Well, Todd Solondz owned this little assignment. Remember Life During Wartime? “Are you seeing anyone?” “No, I’m more focused on China right now. Everything else is history, it’s just a question of time.” Todd Solondz presents: Excerpts from the 3013-3014 website course dialogue of the Global Union of Chinese Vassal States (G.U.C.V.S.) Cinema Academy (fall semester) in form of a faux digital interface. A thousand years in the future, Cinema Academy offers a look back at the seminal works of Pre-cortical Implant Western Cinema 1985-2025 by such masters as Michael Bay, Mel Gibson and Leni Riefenstahl, as well as the ancient craft of “writing” and “filming” “stories.”’ — Animal

the entire film

 

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Wiener Dog (2016)
‘Todd Solondz’s new film, “Wiener-Dog,” the story of a dachshund who is shunted between five different homes, is many things at once. It’s a film of anguished tenderness and of scathing derision, a trip from childhood to old age and from suddenly disabused innocence to bitterly remorseful knowledge; it’s a film of cold experience and gleeful parody, aching empathy and crabby prejudice, affecting drama and calculated symbol and freewheeling fantasy; it’s a loopy comedy that bares human strivings, cravings, and frustrations, and a lofty one that shows people as humiliated playthings of greater forces and their own impulses. It’s precise yet wild, exquisite yet imperfect, and its flaws (with one or two specific exceptions) aren’t simply detachable from the rest of the film—they’re emblems of one personality, one world view, in which the noble and the base, the visionary and the vain are inseparable.’ — Richard Brody

Trailer

Excerpt

Todd Solondz Interview Weiner-Dog

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** Jack Skelley, Hey, Jack. Yeah, lucky me indeed. Next time you go to Tokyo, it’s a non-miss. I’m heartbroken and shocked about Lahaina. I spent my summers every year as a teen at Napili Beach, staying in this little hotel called The Mauian, that’s still there weirdly, and going ‘into town’ to hang or shop or buy records or score drugs or whatever was Lahaina, so I was there a whole lot. Such a pretty little town. Unbelievable that it’s just gone. Really horrifying. I look forward to confabbing with S. and you whenever. Sounds like I have some catching up to do with you guys. Nice, where’s Thomas’s thing? Have book fair fun. And tell me everything. ** _Black_Acrylic, My pleasure, sir, obviously. I saw that Japan got whacked. That’s sad. I do like Sweden for unknown reasons, so I’m transferring my distant caring to them. You down with them? ** Misanthrope, I do know you like the galeries, and that is a kind of music to my … eyes. ‘Like a champ’: that’s what I like to hear. American English has a sweet, likeable side. Weekend’s a question mark at the moment, but it should be ok. The heat vamoosed, and it’s raining, which is my idea of a perfect summer day. ** Mark, I think it was to be in Kansas, yeah. Or wait, maybe slightly cheated in/near Kansas City, Missouri. You know Efteling. So great! It’s a theme park shaped dream. Thanks in advance for getting me into Luna Luna, man. A hit! Yay! Wow! I’m the subject of a hit! Crazy. I would be excited if I were visiting that Museum too. You’re going to have so much fun! Bring lots of sunscreen! ** Bill, Hey. I don’t know if McCollum’s stuff is polarising, but that would make sense. I’m the opposite. If I were a wealthy art collector, one of the very first things I’d buy is ‘Over Ten Thousand Individual Works’. It gives me the cerebral equivalent of a big boner. Oh, really, I’m more of an out-of-towner than you? I guess so. But, relatively speaking, as compared to other d.l.s here, I think you’re a jet setter. Maybe that’s what I was thinking. Or maybe because when you do travel, it’s usually to way the fuck far away. Awesome that you’re tweaking and practicing. Those are happy making words. As regards you. I hope I can shape these fiction things into things I’m okay with and that there’s enough of them for at least a chapbook. We’ll see. Looks good so far. Thank you, pal. ** Steve Erickson, I think antibiotics cam be slow growers, no? That’s my memory. No, I never wrote for The Wire. That would have been a total joy. I wish they occasionally asked writers to do an Invisible Jukebox. That would be a dream come true if I could do one of those. Sigh. Have you ever thought about writing for The Wire? ** Guy, Hi. Christophe is one of the weird townspeople who appear at the scene’s end and some of whom assault the two Krampus kids. He’s kind of the standoffish ringleader. He has one line: ‘We should take them back to town,’ He was one of the producers of ‘LCTG’, which is why he let us force him into being in it. Sounds like you’ll have raves at your fingertips when you’re in the mood. The interview was fun. We were interviewed by the great writer Derek McCormack who’s very funny and wise, so hopefully it’ll turn out ok. ** Cody Goodnight, Hi, Cody. No problem. Yeah, I grew up on the Twilight Zone. I’m sure it influenced my brain heavily in some fashion. You will let me know if I should watch ‘Kickassia’ because I couldn’t tell from your description. Good old Shaggs. I have to figure out what I’m going to do this weekend. Hm. I’ll do my best to make it a goodie if you do the same re: yours. ** Okay. Todd Solondz hasn’t made a film in what seems like a really long time, and I think this fact provided some of the impetus that made me want to expand and restore the blog’s antique Day about him. Have fun with it? It’s totally possible. See you on Monday.