Tag: Art House (Film Genre)

Valerie and her Week of Wonders (1970)

This is…unfortunately, one of those few situations where I honestly dont have a lot to say about the behind the scenes of this weeks episode. I know it’s always a bit of a downer when all I can really say is “Watch my review for the full story!” But sometimes it just be like that tho m8.

What I CAN say, and its totally off topic, but hey. your reading this, you’ve got time. is that at the time I was working on this review I was in a quite stressful and unpleasent place. in fact a decent chunk of this year has been rather stressful and genuinely unplesent at times. I quite recently got a promotion at work where i’ve basically been assigned to *fix* a VERY broken aspect of their business. I like fixing things, im ALL for improvement projects and optimisation. It’s my jam…but this thing…this fucking thing…holy shit. it’s BROKE.

As a result I spent the first 3-4 months being basically dragged by the project face first into the dirt. it was sprawling, awkward FULL of weird variations and bylaws that made NO sense. I likened the experience of coming into work as “Stepping on Landmines” because the problems were seemingly invisible till stepped on, at which point you’d be launched into 2-3 weeks of absolute shrapnel induced carnage only recovering long enough to accidentally drag yourself onto another one. it’s been a shit time honestly. it was painful and i’d regularly find myself working WAY overtime and burning myself out over the weekends trying to catch back up with myself only to repeat it all again the next week!

But! in the last 4-8 weeks i’ve finally stopped being blown up quite so frequently, i’ve managed to slim out some of the worst aspects of the system and introduce better, more robust procedures that have not only given me back more time during the day to actually work on larger improvements to save me even MORE time. But have actually (more often than not) given me my evenings back as well. Im still a few weeks off saying im “comfortable” again…but for now at least…I dont feel quite so distressed by it all and im kind of getting back to being happy with my lot again…and if thats the direction im heading in, I can live with that!

Anyway; yeh…kind of…went off on a tangent there. ENJOY!

I love this poster, its so striking, yet so simple.
by tytdreviews

Decoder (1984)

This was one of those movies I’d litereally never heard of until it was right on top of me. I first heard about it around the time I was looking for a decent copy of “Liquid Sky” and when I finally did find it on Vinegar syndromes site this was sort of sat roughly next to it in the “Recommended” section looking all moody and totally my kind of jam…unfortunately that was at the time that I sank nearly $200 into VS sale items (With shipping it pushed it closer to $230) so I decided to leave it…but that didnt stop me picking it up at the very next sale! and im totally glad I did.

It’s a wonderfully weird film and one that i’ve never really experienced before. it’s super hard to explain, but it’s almost like a film that leads more with sound than it does vision. and the pair marry up in such a way that normal movies and TV programmes just…dont. I can only describe it as it feels like a “Whole” experience. like; if one of these elements was missing the film just would be incomprehensible.

So with the next Vinegar Syndrome sale on the horizon. I say; go and look up “Decoder” it’s probably not for everyone. but if you dig it…ohhhh boy you’ll REALLY dig it.

The Official Poster for this movie is a bit too garish for my taste (It’s basically a giant hypno toad) and given that while frogs are a quite important part of this film they arnt THE film. I instead opted to use Vinegar Syndromes newly commissioned art work…which I feel represents the film much more faithfully.
by tytdreviews