RND/ First off, unless the new definition of “Visionary Film Maker” is “Yet another modern straight-to-virtual-VHS classic slab of raw video Ham”, consider Panos Cosmatos a mere modern minor master of Retrowave Aesthetics, ie. random B-Listers in high saturation cheese fests only truly fit for a stupendously small subset of 80s Schlock aficionado hyper nerds.
Mandy Screenshots / Video Wall:
Rather, simply project Mandy onto the far wall of your luxury antisocial Covid lockdown pad with the sound off and bask at its glacially paced simulacrum of the movie (hiding inside and yet to be made) that Mandy tragically symbolizes – the one falsely advertised in the trailer
The bare faced lie of a trailer, which riotously brought to mind imaginary last minute trips to Mom N’ Pop video rental stores to ‘kick around a few titles’ in the action-horror department at the back of the store past the bead curtains and the mysteriously sticky carpet patch (only you were always sure to leave at least 10 minutes before it closed, lest you were trapped inside with creepy titles like “Mandy” and the monsters in it came to life like some lo-rent Michael Jackson media zombie nightmare.)
Example Mandy Logos:
After two glacially paced weeks of nothing but eye gougingly dull static shots, murky, grainy shadows and droning doom guitars – a heavy trip deep into ‘Shamanic Nouveau’ territory to be sure – Mandy ends as pathetically as it began, in a state of abandoned, action-free digital void.
Worse still, the director of this cosmic furniture chewer seems to have meant every plodding minute of it; where the super cool “Beyond The Black Rainbow” was pure Instagram filters with deliberately applied 80s-VHS-nerd-snob schlock (aka the kind of fare Tarantino used to overrate and jerk to), “Mandy” is wilfully sold as being raw grindhouse (/potential) – but in actuality is all just Instagram filter with only the barest hinted notion of 80s style “Hobo With A Shotgun” video trash sprinkled on top – to keep it all P.C, natch.
Yes the premier wall projected art-wank movie of the year has arrived and its amazingly deadpan sh1te; it seems to mirror what Zizek has said about the rise in popularity of (darkly comical, horribly circus-like) Berlusconian political barbarism-with-a-human-face – that mainstream movie critics now wilfully accept and fully embrace their ideological role as fellow ‘reasonable’ charlatans [1] when it comes to the ‘correct (cultural) reading’ of such blatantly dire flicks – just like the director ordered.
It’s one of the year’s most visceral love stories, handled with profound sensitivity and told with hypnotic precision
– Nick ‘high on bad-LSD’ Allen for Roger Ebert
Was it bollocks. A wasp caught in a matchbox tells a better love story. That’s not the point.
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Example Reference Link
// how to play big science