Home Stretch Time: Who Will Win The Maddin-est Blogathon in the World?

Kevin Lee,
September 23, 2011

UPDATE: Blogroll with links to participating blog entries (see below)

Who loves this Guy the most? We're holding a contest to find out.

All this week, Keyframe honors one of the most singular filmmakers working today: Guy Maddin. Look for specially commissioned articles, a video essay and an exclusive interview with the Mad Cinematic Master of Manitoba. The centerpiece of our weeklong tribute is our first blogathon hosted on Keyframe, dedicated to Maddin, and with a special prize awarded by Guy Maddin himself.

All through the week of September 19-23, we will cross-link to newly published blog posts dedicated to Guy Maddin and his films. At the end of the Blogathon, a panel of judges will review the entries and select one lucky contributor as The Maddin-est Blogger in the World! If your blog post follows the simple rules listed below, you will be eligible to win a special authentic item of Maddin-abilia from the director himself!

Note: Your blog entry needs not be a written article. We encourage submissions in different mediums: video, audio, images, anything that can be posted on a blog entry. What matters most is what matters most in life itself: Inspiration! Take part as if The Heart of the World depended on it!

See the rules below for how to join the Blogathon, and some helpful Maddin links to get you started on ideas. And if anyone needs to watch or rewatch Maddin’s movies to get their blog entry going, we’ll have several of them available on Fandor starting next month.

BLOGATHON ENTRIES SO FAR (Updated Friday 9/23)

We end the blogathon with a kind of beginning: Jandy Stone shares “Confessions of a Maddin Newbie”, the fourth entry by the team at Row Three. “My memories of Maddin films, even ones I’ve seen within the past several months, approximate Maddin’s own slipstream way of visualizing and editing his films with a dream logic all their own.”

At Medium/Materials II: Time Based Media, James Huckenphaler lists Five Movies I Wish Guy Maddin Would Make, with a dream cast including Napoleon, Thomas Pynchon, and Marion Barry. “I think there’s commercial potential here, no? No?”

On David E’s Fablog, David Ehrenstein assembles a politically pointed YouTube homage to “the awesome auteur.”

Row Three delivers the second hat trick of the Blogathon (sign them up for the Winnepeg Maroons!) as Marina Antunes delivers her top five Maddin films.

On Slant Magazine’s The House Next Door, Jaime N. Christley throws a swift dart in an attempt to pierce the heart of Guy Maddin’s art, coining at least two new terms: “nostalgia style” and “pastiche flux.” “Maddin’s films bond together the dizzying sensations of dreaming, of sexualized emotions, and of film viewership—a falling-inward, falling out, falling from a great height.”

9/23:

Row Three issues one of its 3×5 card reviews on Tales from the Gimli Hospital (see above), courtesy of Colleen.

WATCH TALES FROM THE GIMLI HOSPITAL ON FANDOR:

SF360.org chips in with an interview with Maddin by Johnny Ray Huston, on the occasion of Maddin receiving a Golden Gate Award the 2006 San Francisco International Film Festival. Among many other nuggets, you get to hear what Guy has to say about Ann Savage and The Osmonds.

Another one from Row Three, this time Kurt Halfyard hails Careful as Maddin’s best feature film: “A culmination of many of the things which keep film-lovers coming back to Winnipeg maestro’s work: Melodrama heightened to the high of pure comedy, Freud punchdrunk on a cocktail of speedballs and laudanum, flirtations with genre, and the aesthetic of the primordial days of filmmaking at the turn of the 20th century.”

WATCH CAREFUL ON FANDOR:

On Pussy Goes Grrr (which is probably the front-runner for best name of a participating blog), Andreas pens a love letter to “The Wizard of Winnepeg.” “In these increasingly personal films, Maddin mixes irony with genuine emotion like a kid conducting a risky science experiment.”

Lee Price at 21 Essays pulls a hat trick with his third blog entry on “The Heart of the World.” This time he takes a more critical view: the one thing missing from this masterpiece? Dinosaurs!

On Boycotting Trends, Alex Ramon gives a thorough consideration of My Winnipeg, invoking Edward Soja’s theories on space, and a cameo from critic J. Hoberman. “Maddin’s multi-dimensional Winnipeg is a city replete with secret spaces and hidden realms that co-exist with its daily façade, offering the potential for the revision of dominant ideologies.”

KAD links us to a wonderful behind the scenes video of Maddin directing the legendary Ann Savage on the set of My Winnipeg.

Unofficial entry of note: Roger Ebert on My Winnipeg, which he selected as one of the best films of the last decade. “That film just keeps on stirring in my mind. It is reality beyond reality.”

Lee Price at 21 Essays enters “The Heart of the World” for a second time, this time to contemplate the short’s fetching heroine, State Scientist Anna. “When you consider her romantic options, it’s no wonder that Anna, the heroine and world-savior of The Heart of the World, finally chooses to take a one-way trip to the earth’s core.”

Unofficial entry of note: Jonathan Rosenbaum’s four-star review of The Saddest Music in the World elicited a fan letter from Guy: “This appeared in the May 14, 2004 issue of the Chicago Reader, and occasioned one of the few thank-you notes I’ve received from a filmmaker for a review. I hope both Guy Maddin and those reading this will forgive me for immodestly reproducing his email: “Dear Jonathan: I usually try to avoid setting precedents that violate what should be a no-fly zone between critics and filmmakers, but I must say that your review of Saddest Music left me feeling understood at last!!! What a feeling. Thank you for supplying this euphoria. You also win bonus points for the Laura Riding discovery — I always liked her characters’ names. George Toles, who is terrified of reading reviews, will be thrilled to see his unsung name given its proper due. Not only that, you disabled Anthony Lane’s stinkbombs. A million thanks, Jonathan!! Warmest, Guy“”

9/22: Our friends at Zeitgeist Films, the US distributors of many of Maddin’s films (now available on Fandor!) have thrown their hat in the ring. Here’s their blog contribution, an excerpt from Maddin’s published diary From the Atelier Tovar that recounts the eventful day he introduced the Zeitgeist-distributed classic The Umbrellas of Cherbourg – and watched another Zeitgeist title, Irma Vep (now available on Fandor!). “Parts have been redacted to make this safe for work, and to protect the innocent. You’ll have to buy the book—which we highly recommend!—if you want the whole scoop).”

At the brand new blog 21 Essays, Lee Price takes a tongue-in-cheeck film historical approach in probing into “The Heart of the World,” “this fascinating artifact of another time and place.” “Guy Maddin, the mysterious director of this poorly preserved film, must have been a German emigrant to the Soviet Union, perhaps a cinematographer working at Germany’s UFA Studios in the 1920s, frustrated by his inability to advance to the director’s chair.”

At TCM Movie Morlocks, medusamorlock raves over the imaginative nostalgia of Guy Maddin’s My Winnipeg. “The Manitoba city’s inescapable relationship with snow is one thread in the intricate mythology woven by Maddin in his fanciful documentary.”

9/21: At Krell Laboratories, Christianne Benedict talks about “the Rosetta Stone” that brought her around to Maddin’s films, the short film “The Heart of the World.” “Maddin’s aesthetic poured into my brain and watered my own film obsessions with its concentrated intoxicants.”

9/19: On Network Awesome, Kristen Bialik draws an inspired link between David Lynch, the perennial dog-kid classic Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey and Guy Maddin’s short “Spanky: To the Pier and Back”. “Something about the roaming dog unnerves me.”