In dreams, emotions are overwhelming

"A man held captive by the people in his dreams tries to wake himself up and take control of his own imaginings"

To those who enjoy sci-fi drama films, and colourful sequences that look like they've been taken directly out of a pop up book, boy we got a film for you.

From the director of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Michel Gondry, comes a dreamlike film, ( no pun intended). The Science of Sleep is dubbed as the next sci-fi drama film to capture the hearts and minds of independent film enthusiasts. Some fans think the plot for The Science of Sleep is too similar to Eternal Sunshine, with both main characters dealing with issues related to the mind and trying to fix the relationship they're in at the same time. But even with the same director, I don't think S.O.S will remind you of E.S.O.S.M, for one, Science of Sleep deals with dreams, Eternal Sunshine dealt with erasing memories. And two, the characters are totally different, the main character, Stephane, played by Gael Garcia Bernal moves from Mexico to his childhood home in Paris after his father's death. There he meets, Stephanie a composer who lives across the hall, played by Charlotte Gainsbourg. The two start a relationship and through it, Stephane's dream world makes its way to the real world and the two clash. What you get are scenes of dream sequences and real life combining forming beautiful and elaborate scenes of cardboard cities and colourful life.

The first thing that pulled me to go see this movie when it comes out is its leading actor, Gael Garcia Bernal, I'm familiar and love his films so I definitely can't miss this one. When you watch the trailer, you know you've seen him somewhere but can't point your finger to it. Two of the better known flicks he was in was the raunchy Y Tu Mama Tambien, and the docu-drama The Motorcycle Diaries. If you haven't seen those two, go to your nearest blockbuster and rent them. Just a heads up, both are rated R, but Y Tu Mama Tambien should've been NC-17 if you know what i mean. Oh and look out for Gael Garcia Bernal in the movie Babel, with Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett.

I don't have much information on Charlotte Gainsbourg, all i know is that she had a role in the movie 21 Grams and she's actually a musician in real life not just in the film. She has an album titled 5:55 from Astralwerks coming out later this year.

Speaking of music, this movie has a decent soundtrack. If you're wondering what the first song is that plays on the trailer, its "After Hours" by The Velvet Underground, don't confuse them with Velvet Revolver, The Velvet Underground was a experimental, art, rock band in the 60's and 70's. And check this out, Andy Warhol was the band's manager for a couple of years.
Rilo Kiley has an "After Hours" cover, so if you like the original version and really want to hear the R.K version, then leave a comment here and we'll send it to you. i don't feel like putting it up here cause it took me awhile to track that baby down so yeah.

Don't forget to check out The Science of Sleep website, it has a lot neat wallpapers, buddy icons, and a "What Do Dreams Mean" section.



Now for the all important linkages:

Velvet Underground- After Hours

Charlotte Gainsbourg- The Songs That We Sing

The Science of Sleep Website

Charlotte Gainsbourg's myspace



Charlie

This is our summer blockbuster.

Anne and I have been waiting all summer long for something like this to come our way. After seeing the trailer, the same feeling i got two summers ago crawled up on my skin. You know what im talking about right? The Indie flick written and directed by Scrubs character Zach Braff that came out two summers ago. I got that same infinite, "damn i have a feeling this is going to be good before i even go see it/i can't wait to have it on dvd" feeling. Yeah exactly!



Little Miss Sunshine, starring everyone's The Office favorite, Steve Carell, you know it's going to be funny. Not 40 year old virgin funny, but Garden State funny. I'm comparing Little Miss Sunshine and Garden State alot not because they're both summer indie flicks coming out of Fox Searchlight Pictures, not because they both have a semi-all star cast, and not because they both have a decent indie{tastic} soundtrack, but because upon watching the trailer, you can sense that this movie is going to be calm and at the same time an adventure in the making.


Garden State gave us a whole dimension of characters, ranging from the guy who doesn't know where his life is heading, to the chronic liar, and so on. You can see from the trailer that Little Miss Sunshine has the same characteristics.


If this isn't enough to convince you to see it, how about this....


Sufjan Stevens is in the soundtrack. Yeah how bout now?


So skip those long, annoying lines and the rowdy teenager crowds at the megaplexes and find yourself a theater that shows Indie films and see this movie.


The movie comes out today in New York and L.A. But will show in more theaters later on this month.




Summer Fun links

Little Miss Sunshine website


Little Miss Sunshine release schedule


Buy the soundtrack




-Charlie

voxtrot has a fabulous family tree

I have to say by discovering Voxtrot, {Charlie&I love them to death, so if you haven't heard them, please don't deprive yourself of these five fine gentlemen, I was led to find their keyboardist, Jared Van Fleet's gorgeous solo project, Sparrow House. His friend, Red Hunter, an Austin local sang on a Sparrow House song called "The Reflection" and is in a band I talked about recently here, Peter and the Wolf. Then today I discovered both Voxtrot's bassist and drummer, Jason Chronis and Matt Simon are in this four-piece band called Belaire.

And they rock!

They're perfect with summertime and lemonade, so go ahead and indulge. Think of carefree Tilly and the Wall and synth-loversThe Octopus Project. I can't imagine how much fun they are live, but unfortuantely, right now Belaire is on a sort of hiatus, since each of the members are involved with other projects. Their latest show was back in June, and no shows have been scheduled yet.

{photo by Jason Cox}

The other members are vocalist, synth-maker and guitarist: Cari Palazzolo and vocalist and synth-maker: Christa Palazzolo. They're twins!

Belaire's got a self-titled EP for sale and also a limited edition 7" vinyl that has the song "Haunted Castle". On their MySpace, there are three songs available for downloading and this one very very extremely, incredibly amusing and cute french/english song called, "Ces Mots" {translated: "These Words"}. They also covered Kayne West's "Through the Wire" and it's pretty awesome; it's downloadable and waiting on their MySpace.



Tune in&purchase:

...from unknown?

Belaire-RIP

...from S/T EP

Belaire-Back into the Wall


All that Linkage{in order of appearance&more}:
Introducing Voxtrot
Buy Belaire's self-titled EP
Buy Belaire's limited edition vinyl, "Haunted Castle"
Belaire's MySpace {listen to "Ces Mots"!}
Visit Belaire's website


~Anne

Are you in the camera crowd?

As you know, A Camera in the Crowd is a project we started to give you guys a taste of the music we like, and the two distinct styles of photography coming from Anne and I. A Camera in the Crowd is just a month old, but we've had this idea of music and different photographers sharing their work and clashing together in one place. Check Enteraction, if you wanna see where this whole project got its roots, actually you need to go back to "exposing distortion" which we created in 2004 but that doesn't exist anymore.

With A Camera in the Crowd, our goal's the same, get photographers to join and share their work not just with us, but to everyone else. We wanna see the world through your eyes, different styles of photography, from different locations. We thought about it long and hard, and we're only going to be accepting one photographer per state for people living in the United States. We have a couple of exceptions though, like California, Texas and New York, they have a couple of major cities, plus I live in California and Anne lives in Texas, so we need additional photographers from those states. People who don't live in the US are just as welcome to apply!

You may ask, what does a member of the Camera Crowd get to do?

Well once you get in, you'll be able to post once a week on the Camera Crowd photoblog. Anne and I will also choose photographers whose work will be featured on the "A Camera in the Crowd" blog.

Now, this is where we get technical, so before you ask any frickin questions, make sure you read this over and over again.

Requirments:

1. YOU NEED A FLICKR PAGE. No questions asked, if you don't have your photos on flickr then were not letting you in. www.flickr.com to sign up if you don't have one.


2. You also need to answer the Q&A that's available below for download as a word document. Fill that up and email it with the subject line " Camera Crowd application" to cameracrowd@gmail.com.
   

We might get a lot of submissions, we might not, nonetheless, we will only accept the top 3 submissions. We don't want to end up accepting everyone, thats asking for chaos.

We will be accepting submissions till the 6th of August. We're going to see how this whole thing goes and if all goes well, then we'll be letting more people in later on this year.

So remember, you need a Flickr, fill up the q&a, then mail it to cameracrowd@gmail.com



If we missed anything and have questions, leave us a comment along with your name and myspace url. Or you could contact us @ cameracrowd@gmail.com

Download the Q&A : Q&A

-Charlie

a few weeks ago...

I went to see Peter and the Wolf at an artsy house-turned venue called Super Happy Fun Land. His band's lineup changes in every city and ranges from only the lone Red Hunter himself to an almost circus-like 14+.

PatW's music might set off the freak-folk flag for most, but just like any artist pigeon-holed into any genre it's not like it's intentional. It just is. I guess you can imagine something similar along the lines of Devendra Banhart, CocoRosie or Akron/Family, but then that doesn't even sound right.

After the band, Listen Listen was finished; we thought why isn't anyone setting up?

The answer was they didn't need to.

It was Red Hunter, his guitar, a mike, and an amp. Just him standing with a guitar that has been wrapped around with tape, go figure. He looked like a pirate with his pants that seemed to have a tough time with scissors and for awhile everyone thought, "is this it? Well this is going to really really awkward or really really amazing," It wasn't neither of those two; it was honestly eye, ear, jaw-opening experince I've ever had.

I'd like to think he's our modern-day troubadour. The most honest form of music-making and the proof will hit you as soon as you hear his voice that will stay with you your whole life filling your head with his stories.
He'll stay with you.

How could something so simple be so good? I was sitting back on the theater-style seats and just enjoying myself hearing him tell us stories in an almost conversational way. It was almost as if it was a house-party and we were all friends and just having a hell of a time. He's so comfortable playing and talking to the audience.

After awhile he invited members from the audience and the other bands that played that night to play their makeshift instrument of choice to keep the beat. One guy had one of those plastic kiddie chairs and another played with a beer bottle. It was improv like I've never seen before. I've got his self-titled album and his Experiments in Junk. The former has been busy spinning circles in my stereo ever since.

On this long-winding tour, there will be secret shows and at the most unusual locations. He's already played on an island and all the people had to arrive by canoes. Abandoned buses, graveyards and unused underpasses and will leave his Toyota Corolla in the garage for awhile and travel by sailboat on the Intracoastal Waterway that runs along the east coast for the last leg of his tour.

The rest of his tour is at the PatW MySpace you should go see him or at least listen to "Strange Eyes". If you do get to experience PatW send him our love.

Tune in&purchase:

...from S/T

Peter and the Wolf-The Owl
Peter and the Wolf-Silent Movies
Peter and the Wolf-Strange Machines

~Anne

why can't we have sxsw or a.c.l instead?

I will be attending the Warped Tour this Saturday in San Francisco, and i manage to get myself a press pass. I don't like any of the bands playing there so i need your help in deciding which bands i should shoot. These aren't promises, i will be working at the Militia Group booth all day so i might not have a chance to get to these bands when they play. But i will try my hardest to photograph the bands you wanna see at the time they play. I've excluded Thursday because they are the only band i actually wanna photograph, so Thursday is a must. If you vote other please make sure to comment below and let me know which band{s} that is. You don't have to be a blogger member to comment.

Note: You can vote for multiple bands.

Charlie

Which Warped Tour band do you want me to photograph?
	Armor for sleep
	Against me!
	Hellogoodbye
	Plain White T's
	Saosin
	Saves the Day
	Underoath
	other
Free polls from Pollhost.com