vid_seeker, 5. April 2007, 18:52
Handsome Furs - Dumb Animals (Director Panos Cosmatos)


Excellent new video for Subpop's Handsome Furs

You Tube:
www.youtube.com
QT:
www.panoscosmatos.com
         
no words can describe how good this is... have a cigar Mr Cosmatos and fucking enjoy it
         
I guess Panos Cosmatos is the son of George Pan Cosmatos, the late director of Rambo / First Blood Part II. Yeah. He ain't a chip off the old block. This video is definitely louche.
         
Nice find on the George P. Cosmatos connection. I wonder if they are indeed related. And yes, this is one of the better videos I've seen in some time.
         
Here's a widescreen quicktime version of the video

www.panoscosmatos.com

By the way 'louche' is my new favorite word.
         

those kids think they are like soooo emo

         
tasty...
         
potent, potent stuff. (lighting, framing/camerawork, edit, styling, fit with track, all of it.)
not sure i agree on louche - tho clandestine, it's so unflinching/hardliner. more like haneke, less like lynch.
         
Haneke's style is much more austere/austerus, no flashy flashed eye candy. The visual imaginary is clearly Lynchian.
         
not sure i agree on flashy flashed eye candy, here. sure, there's lynch in this, but it's too determinate to be louche. (pour moi.)
         
No dyslogism intended. Unfathomable, not shady.
         
Liked it a lot.
However, perhaps the use of focus (or softness) was over my head..??
         
i dunno. i liked the chances the director took; but it felt too much like shooting a David Lynch film on video. (Inland Empire?) felt too studenty. I felt you could see through all of the performances. I think casting nefarious older man with a cell phone is harder than it seems.
         
Captainmarc22 misses the point entirely...again.
         
twinkle toes, what point is that exactly? It's an okay clip but when i find myself thinking about the actors acting and wonder what their audition was like, and maybe they're friends with the director... well then, I feel like it's not sucessful acting or directing. It's all subjective of couse; but I can see through it.

And this isn't limited to music videos. I though the same thing watching "Stranger than Fiction" - the suspension of disbelief just wasn't there.
         
Captain, you're over-thinking. You do this quite often.

Here's the point you're missing:

It's low budget yet manages to be convincing and moody and engaging. The photography is very well done and the performances far better then most in the MV arena. Does that really need to be picked apart? I feel like it's one thing to criticize a video like this if it were a big budget affair, there really wouldn't be an excuse for less then stellar acting in that case. For something of this level, however, I think you have to be willing to forgive certain aspects of the production when the director is clearly doing something worthwhile yet obviously working with less then what might be ideal.

If you had done you're research before firing away, you would also have known that the "Actors" are members of the band, which for my money only adds to how well done this is given that musicians usually fail at this level of theatre.

It's also nice to be encouraging to people who obviously have promise, especially when it's their first video.

Was your first video this good? Not that I can remember.
         
Oh Captain, as usual, you've COMPLETELY BLOWN IT!

Let me break it down for you, you simplistic Philistine...

This video is ok.
         
Oh Spit, you lovely, lovely man you! You've reverted to name calling. How charming! Clearly a testament to your superior intelligence. And your use of the word philistine, how eighth grade vocabulary test of you!

You're insightful and oh so dogmatic commentaries on modern media never cease to amaze me!