Unmoved by the Underground

I can understand why the American underground movements are really fantastic and influential, a turning point in the history of Avant Garde cinema.

During Flaming Creatures, my mind went from having "Sweet Transvestite" stuck in my head to "BAD TOUCH! BAD TOUCH!" during the rape-orgy. You know what? Not an orgy. I'm not considering that an orgy, not with screaming women. And ever after that, Flaming Creatures pretty much lost me. The class on Tuesday made it more comfortable to talk about it and look at it from other angles than just the original reaction, but I don't think I would ever want to watch that movie again.

Blow Job was just really boring. Readings seem to suggest that that was what Andy Warhol was going for, but I don't know. It lasted too long for what it was. I ended up looking for shapes in the crevices of the actor's face. I liked the emphasis of chiaroscuro used on the aesthetic level, but it works better with still art.

And, (nostalgia) left me thinking: Cool concept, bad execution. Watching the photographs be destroyed was interesting the first two, maybe three times, but they all followed a very similar pattern. The memories of the filmmaker never lasted for as long as it took to render the film to crackly black plastic. And why was the sound off from the photographs? Was it to show that memory is faulty? It just lasted way too long for me.