• Captive Audience
    Captive Audience
    by Dave Reidy
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Monday
Jun212010

Improvabull: Dezmin Starts Over

Some might ask how Dezmin can start over after making such a feeble attempt at continuing. I'll grant you that. The Bull has not made many (read: 2) updates since 2002 or so.

Right.

Today is a new day, though. It's just like scale day after a long stretch of gorging on cheese and meat products. Change needs to happen.

(Ed. note: We definitely did not spend 8 years eating only cheese and meat products. Not all of them, at least.)

Since you last smelled Dezmin in a virtual way, some things have happened. Moving. Growing old. Tighter t-shirt wearing. Less buttons being buttoned. All nice things. Oh, and we also made a movie. Many of you not living in Pittsburgh or Chicago may have missed it. That's ok. We will forgive you someday. But we liked it and it had a lot of good music in it. So there. Feel bad yet?

Regardless, Dezmin and his Archives are back in business. (Literally ... we have papers and junk.). In doing so, we hope to return you to that old state if periodic levity which you casually enjoyed.

Most importantly, we are working on a new film. A short one, but length doesn't matter, right? (Say yes.) We are going to try to provide regular updates through production. Today was Day 1. It went swimmingly (or, goringly, if you will). We had a great interview, good audio, and ... well, it was the first day. Getting started is pretty awesome. Enjoyabull, too.

In the meanwhile, though, we've just decided to start rerunning some of your old favorites. Stuff from the good old days. Both of them. (Ha! My sides! Stop it already!).

So stayed tuned. Dezmin is back. And what better way to celebrate our back-ness than by lazily rerunning bits from 8 years ago while we continue to redo the site. Please enjoy.

(Ed. note: working on website is hard. We're not smart. It'll happen, just wait.)

Wednesday
Mar182009

Dezmin at SXSW: Rapid Reviews

5 days in Austin, Texas ... tough to beat.  Our thoughts:

 

1. "I Love You, Man" is very very funny. Good effort by Rudd, Segel, Favreau, and the girls at the Q&A too

2. "ExTerminators" also quite good ... But was about girls getting revenge, not former robots

3. a trifle disappointed with the first batch of shorts, some winners though

4. "Pulling John" ... Fantastic, exciting doc about pro arm wrestling ... John Brzenk is a mythical slayer of monsters!

5. "Objectified" was a little light on real ideas, a little heavy on industrial designers high giving each other. Looked nice though.

6. "Moon" was alright, outer space and talking computers and all.

7. Impressed by "Alexander the Last" ... Watch it now on IFC on demand ... Joe Swanberg raises the bar for the mumblecore crowd.

8. "Artois the Goat" was an entertaining romantic comedy about French cheese made in Texas.

9. "Garbage Dreams" doc about Cairo's garbage collecting social class ... Interesting but heavy.

10. "Modern Love is Automatic" ... sad & apathetic nurse turned dominatrix ... filmed in pastel colors with a death metal soundtrack, pretty awesome ... but with a creepy Todd Solondz-ish vibe.

11. "Drag Me to Hell" by Sam Raimi (in person, vaudeville-style) ... scary, scary flick ... with bats flying around inside the theater.

12. Special screening of Linklater's particularly awesome "Me & Orson Welles." That Efron kid actually has talent ... who knew?  Christian McKay may be the ghost of Orson Welles back from the dead.  I saw "F is for Fake" ...

13. "Best Worst Movie" ... "Troll 2" ... you can't piss on hospitality!  Nice.

14. "The 2 Bobs" ... Foul mouthed video game nerds find romance and foil jay chandresekar's spam plans ... Kinda funny, as long as you don't mind Christian bad guys.

15. "Observe and Report" is insane!!!

16. "Letters to the President" ... superbly interesting doc about Ahmadinejad and the power and perils of populism.

17. Rode the cow of awakening in "splinterheads" ... with shooter mcgavin, marty mcfly's girl, and the pretty hacker from transformers.

18. "Four Boxes" ... tricky but meh.

19. "Trust Us, This is All Made Up" ... every day, I say.

20. "Saint Mishbehavin'" ... Wavy Gravy is pretty awesome.

Sunday
Feb082009

The First Review

Well, our new web home hasn't even been rebuilt yet, but the fruits of Dezmin's labors are being reviewed already.  One of the Bull's esteemed Editors Emeritus has posted a nice message about "The Key Party" and the music of Pittsburgh.  A scholar and a gentleman, that Reidy:

Filmed in the mumblecore aesthetic, the Key Party calls to mind surprise hit Once, which was two-fifths love story and three-fifths music film. The ratio in the Key Party is more like one-fifth love to four-fifths music, but that is, by and large, a good thing, as the bands and the quality of their songs are what make the film most compelling.

Read the remainer at Closer Look's blog-a-bull website:

http://www.closerlook.com/company/blog/pittsburgh