Criterion Flash Sale - 50% off

Criterion has just announced a single-day 50% off sale on all of their 975 titles, including these works by filmmakers who also identify as visual artists:

Eleven other recommendations: 

The last film made by Pier Paolo Pasolini, before he was brutally murdered by being run over by his own car, having his testicles crushed by a metal bar and being burned with gasoline. His adaptation of the Marquis de Sade's 1785 novel The 120 Days of Sodom transposes the violent psycho-sexual story from 18th century Germany to WWII fascist Italy. Despite being made almost forty-five years ago, the film has lost none of it's power to shock and is often considered the most disturbing movie ever made.

Ten times better than the film Spike Lee won an Oscar for last week. BlacKkKlansman takes a story that already stretches credulity and adds a series of entirely fictional elements, most of which only serve to make the police look more heroic. While the Black Lives Matter movement is fighting to undo systemic institutional racism, BlacKkKlansman takes a "one bad apple" look at a police department. It's a film that feels entirely removed from the contemporary discussion around race, whereas Do The Right Thing was timely and urgent, so much so that some commentators feared the film would lead to race riots.

The brilliant debut of Lynne Ramsay (Morvern Callar, We Need To Talk About Kevin, You Were Never Really Here), Ratcatcher is a haunting look at childhood set during the national garbage strike in 1970's Scotland.

Volker Schlöndorff’s solid adaptation of the great novel by Günter Grass about a boy - repulsed by adult hypocrisy in the lead-up to WWII - who refuses to grow up. The film was banned in Ontario and - many years later - an Oklahoma man was arrested and charged with possession of child pornography, after renting a copy of the Palme d'Or and Oscar winning film, from Blockbuster Video. 

Mike Leigh has made many brilliant films. This is the best. 

If you own only one talking gorilla documentary, it should be this one, about Hanabiko "Koko", who died last June.

The semi-autobiographical film against which all of Noah Baumbach's work will be judged. 

The second feature by Andrea Arnold (Red Road, American Honey, some episodes of Transparent, etc.), about a 15 year old girl living on an East London council housing estate. Extras on the disc include the short films Milk (1998), i (2001), and the Oscar-winning Wasp (2003).

Often considered the greatest Canadian film ever (it's not - Leolo is), Claude Jutra's 1971 National Film Board feature is an evocative portrait of a boy's coming of age in wintry 1940s rural Quebec.

Another coming-of-age narrative, The Apu Trilogy follows the title character from his childhood in rural Bengal to eventual marriage and fatherhood. Often considered the greatest Indian film(s) ever made, the score also introduced the world to sitarist Ravi Shankar.  

Following her death at the age of 41, Morrissey dedicated a performance of his song "Late Night, Maudlin Street" at the Royal Albert Hall to actress Katrin Cartlidge, describing her as a "brilliant person and fantastic actor". He's wrong about a lot lately, but not this. Cartlidge was stunning in some Mike Leigh films (Naked, above, and Career Girls), Lars Von Trier's Breaking the Waves, as well as this epic British-French-Macedonian co-production.

Yinka Shonibare MBE | Kaleidoscope

Yinka Shonibare MBE
Kaleidoscope
London, UK: The Multiples Store, 2014
8 x 8 x 27 cm.
Edition of 45


"...Shonibare playfully reclaims an object from a familiar British tradition and subverts it through the use of batik patterns and by transforming the shape into that of a phallus. The opening at the head of the phallus reveals a distorted image of Sandro Botticelli's Birth of Venus. Shonibare has replaced the familiar image of the ideal female nude with a photograph of a well-endowed male, subverting the image and preforming an act of reverse objectification. This object can also be seen as a subversive take on 19th century Victoriana, and specifically the "peep show" images of women viewed through devices such as a kaleidoscope."

- The Multiples Store

This week on Tumblr

This week on Tumblr: bookworks, multiples, jewelry, album covers and unique works by Tauba Auerbach.

Richard Artschwager | Port

Richard Artschwager
Port
New York City, USA : Multiples, Inc., 1991
50 x 9 cm.
Edition of 50 signed, titled and dated copies

A wood, Formica® and acrylic multiple, with a current market value of between four and six thousand US dollars.

Stephen McCoy | Housing Estates 1979–1985 Boxset

Stephen McCoy
Housing Estates 1979–1985 Boxset
Southport, UK: Café Royal Books, 2019
14 x 20 cm.
Edition of 100

Five books and a signed print, available from the publisher for forty pounds, from the publisher, here.

Sarah Lucas | Selfish in Bed Shirt

Sarah Lucas
Selfish in Bed Shirt
New York City, USA: New Museum, 2018
Dimensions vary
Edition size unknown

An edition published to coincide with the New Museum retrospective of Lucas' work held last fall, this t-shirt recreates (and inverts) the one worn by Lucas in two photographs from 2000: Selfish in Bed I and Selfish in Bed II. 

The shirts, available in Medium, Large and Extra Large, are available for $35, at the New Museum Bookstore, here.

John and Yoko | Wedding Album

Last week it was announced that Yoko Ono and John Lennon’s Wedding Album will be reissued on March 22nd, to coincide with their 50th wedding anniversary. The disc will be released via Secretly Canadian, in partnership with Chimera Music, with a "faithful recreation" of the original artwork. In addition to the CD and white vinyl reissue,  it will also be made available as a digital download, apparently for the first time. It is available to pre-order now, here.

Wedding Album is the third and final record from a series of experimental albums that served as documents of Lennon and Ono's life together. Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins marked the beginning of their romantic and artistic partnership, and Unfinished Music No. 2: Life with the Lions documented their 1968 stay in London's Queen Charlotte Hospital, where Ono suffered a miscarriage.

Wedding Album was released on Apple records in October 1969, credited only to John and Yoko, without their last names listed. The disk commemorated their wedding in Gibraltar on 20 March 1969, and subsequent honeymoon.

It was released as an elaborate box set, designed by John Kosh, who was responsible for the Beatles'  Abbey Road album cover (released a month prior) and would go on to work with Lennon and Ono on the War is Over [If You Want It] campaign. The box included photographs, drawings by Lennon, a reproduction of their marriage certificate, a 16-page booklet of press clippings and a picture of a slice of wedding cake, possibly as a nod to Oldenburg's 1966 work Wedding Souvenir.

"It was like our sharing our wedding with whoever wanted to share it with us. We didn't expect a hit record out of it... that's why we called it Wedding Album. You know, people make a wedding album, show it to the relatives when they come round. Well, our relatives are the... what you call fans, or people that follow us outside. So that was our way of letting them join in on the wedding," Lennon told the BBC in 1980.

The A-side of the record featured "John & Yoko", a 22:41 recording made in April 1969, of Lennon and Ono calling out each other's names over the sound of their heartbeats. The b-side, "Amsterdam" was recorded at the Hilton Hotel in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, a month prior. It consists of dialogue from their Bed-In campaign for peace, including interviews, conversations and snippets of songs ("Goodbye Amsterdam Goodbye", "John John (Let's Hope For Peace)", "Grow Your Hair", and a brief excerpt of the Beatles' "Good Night", performed a cappella).

Reviews were terrible and sales were poor.

The Melody Maker newspaper ran a front cover piece by Richard Williams, who mistook the test pressings he received as review copies for the final album. Critics were sent two single-sided LPs with the contents of the original single LP on the A-sides, and test-tone signals on the other. His review included the both "John & Yoko" and "Amsterdam", but also the engineer's test signals, which he mistook for intended content. He noted that "...constant listening reveals a curious point: the pitch of the tones alters frequency, but only by microtones or, at most, a semitone. This oscillation produces an almost subliminal, uneven 'beat' which maintains interest. On a more basic level, you could have a ball by improvising your very own raga, plainsong, or even Gaelic mouth music against the drone."

Lennon and Ono dispatched a telegram of thanks and congratulations to the critic:

DEAR RICHARD THANK YOU FOR YOUR FANTASTIC REVIEW OF OUR WEDDING ALBUM INCLUDING C-AND-D SIDES. WE ARE CONSIDERING IT FOR OUR NEXT RELEASE. MAYBE YOU ARE RIGHT IN SAYING THAT THEY ARE THE BEST SIDES STOP WE BOTH FEEL THAT THIS IS THE FIRST TIME A CRITIC TOPPED THE ARTIST. WE ARE NOT JOKING. LOVE AND PEACE STOP JOHN AND YOKO LENNON.