Here’s an event taking place in Charlottesville later this week that serves as a perfect bookend to this past weekend’s “Aliens”-themed Virginia Film Festival.  It also should be exciting news for fans of the Oklahoma-based band of “fearless freaks”, The Flaming Lips.  On Friday (11/07), WNRN 91.9FM will be presenting a special FREE screening of the film “Christmas on Mars”, the psychedelic science-fiction movie written and directed by the Flaming Lips’ frontman Wayne Coyne.  The screening will be held upstairs at Boylan Heights (on the UVA Corner) at 8pm.  All ages with a limited menu available for movie-goers.

Here’s how Coyne describes the film on the band’s website:

“Maybe Eraserhead or Dead Man crossed with some kind of fantasy and space aspects, like The Wizard of Oz and maybe A Space Odyssey, except done without real actors or money, and set at Christmas-time. The story that unfolds is intended to hint at childlike magic within a tragic and realistic situation.”

The film, which debuted at this year’s Sasquatch! Music Festival, stars the Flaming Lips’ multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd as the movie’s lead character Major Syrtis and features a cast which includes all of the members of the Flaming Lips as well as appearances by Adam Goldberg, singer-songwriter Steve Burns, and SNL’s Fred Armisen.  “Christmas on Mars” hits stores on DVD on Tuesday, November 11.  The accompanying 12-song film soundtrack will also be released the same day.  [Watch the trailer for “Christmas on Mars” here]

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Don’t forget the Virginia Film Festival starts on Thursday.  We don’t have an official preview (any film experts in the house?), but we do have some videos to share with you.

Official Trailer

Link to Preview Movie.

Enjoy!

Popularity: 19% [?]

06/22:  Song of the Day.  Vampire Weekend–Oxford Comma

Today’s Song of the Day highlights a couple aspects of the music video.  First off, this brand new music video from current indie-rock darlings Vampire Weekend just debuted on MTV.  I find this interesting because I didn’t know that MTV still showed music videos?!?

Now that I’ve gotten over the initial MTV shock, I can concentrate on what I really like about this new video; which is that it’s shot in one long tracking shot.  From start to finish, there is no cut, no editing, and no change of camera.  Just one long, continuous camera shot with all the action put to film in a single take.  (Although I read that it took 17 attempts before getting the whole thing choreographed just so).  Technically these aren’t the easiest shots in the world to pull off, although modern advances such as Steadicam have definitely aided directors in making it look easy. 

All in all, a well done video and I’m not even going to deduct points for the director’s decision to show the dolly tracks used during the video’s last sequence.  And oh yeah, the song ain’t bad either.  The video for Vampire Weekend’s “Oxford Comma” is after the jump.  Thoughts anyone?

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Popularity: 37% [?]