The Music Video Mini-List

An ongoing project to survey the best films of individual decades, genres, and filmmakers.
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colinr0380
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Re: The Music Video Mini-List

#326 Post by colinr0380 » Sun Apr 12, 2020 4:44 am

I'm cross posting a bit with the post on the Animal Crossing thread, but the exploration of the "Dad" YouTube channel has led me to the great Madeon remix version of Yelle's Que Veux-tu video, along with another version of Madeon's Pop Culture mash up which is sort of occupying the opposite end of the spectrum to the Tsai Ming-liang Walker films!

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colinr0380
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Re: The Music Video Mini-List

#327 Post by colinr0380 » Mon May 11, 2020 12:38 pm

Still on the Are Sounds Electrik channel trip, I have really enjoyed contrasting 1979's Pop Musik by M against the 1989 version and then the latest much more Ballardian-feeling collage video to the 2008 30th anniversary remix version of the song! I kind of prefer the last version, and the editing of that video is amazing!

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colinr0380
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Re: The Music Video Mini-List

#328 Post by colinr0380 » Sun May 17, 2020 4:44 am

Watching the Eurovision last night one of the highlights was the moment where Netta, who won Eurovision in 2018 with what I found to be perhaps the most irritating possible fusion of Bjork babbling, Lady Gaga incomprehensibility, a bit of the chicken dance(?) and the impossible to intone with a straight face line "I'm taking my Pikachu home" turned up in lockdown to perform Cuckoo. If Netta can produce something that beautiful (and still have all the hallmarks of the previous track down to Bjork-style musical boxes and the obsession with making bird sounds), I think I have some of my hope for humanity restored!

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tenia
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Re: The Music Video Mini-List

#329 Post by tenia » Sun May 17, 2020 5:25 am

Her 2018 winning song was also blatantly ripping off Seven Nations Army to the point I still don't understand how it was allowed to compete in the first place. It of course got settled later with the band in regards of this, but it feels like the 2018 competition got robbed since the winner was a song that basically broke the songwriting rules.

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Re: The Music Video Mini-List

#330 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Mon May 25, 2020 8:09 pm

Jess Cope is a stop-animation filmmaker, who through her efforts with her Owl House Studios, created several videos for Steven Wilson (most of which I've shared here before). Revisiting one today, "Drive Home", really brought back how unique it's vision was from most anything else I'd seen. In what are seemingly very crude depictions of humans, there is a deep humanity mined out of them, reflective of the lyrics and Guthrie Govan's piercing guitar solo that brings the emotion up tenfold. This brief interview with her is enlightening to her process and how she approached the songs.

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colinr0380
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Re: The Music Video Mini-List

#331 Post by colinr0380 » Fri May 29, 2020 3:39 am

If you are OK with some more trauma, then the music video for Roadkill Ghost Choir's A Blow To The Head is well worth seeing. The glitchy, grimy, mangled VHS tape aesthetic taken to extremes works very well here, lending the sense of accessing images that were never intended to be seen and an era of video nasties simultaneously. Watching a trio of people seemingly getting roughed up and ritualistically tortured before escaping through the woods only to return to where they began made me think of Italian cannibal films, the more notorious entries in the Guinea Pig series, The Most Dangerous Game, and a little bit of that late 90s lo-fi shocker The Mutilation Man and any number of straight-to-video shockers shot in local woods.

EDIT: Whilst on the subject of horror, I had forgotten to mention the homage to American Psycho in a cover of This Must Be The Place by Miles Fisher (who also went on to appear in Final Destination 5)
Last edited by colinr0380 on Sat Nov 28, 2020 6:45 pm, edited 5 times in total.

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brundlefly
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Re: The Music Video Mini-List

#332 Post by brundlefly » Wed Aug 12, 2020 6:35 am

Michel Gondry and his brother Oliver directed the new IDLES video, which is okay enough, but not as much fun as the one they did last year for -M-'s "Grand petit con."

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bottled spider
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Re: The Music Video Mini-List

#333 Post by bottled spider » Sun Sep 06, 2020 9:43 pm

Not one of ABBA's top hits, nor an exceptional video, but this sure is odd, and really quite charming: When I Kissed the Teacher

I don't really listen to Kate Bush, but I quite like her videos, especially Wuthering Heights and that duet with Peter Gabriel.
Rubberband Girl: the "elastic band" dancing is cool.
Love and Anger: it's hard to object to ballerinas, whirling dervishes, and glitter.

None of my friends find this at all amusing, let alone hysterically funny, which saddens me: Stravinsky: Gangnam Style

I don't think Negativland got much discussion in this thread. I had never heard of them before. I find this beautiful and extraordinary: This is Not Normal. I feel I've heard this style of music before, and seen this style of video, but never done quite so satisfactorily.

An oldie, and maybe corny, but I like her dancing barefoot in her red dress, and the projection of the car on her naked body, and man can she hit the notes: I Drove All Night (Lauper cover)

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The Music Video Mini-List

#334 Post by therewillbeblus » Fri Sep 18, 2020 3:20 pm

Janelle Monáe’s Turntables just dropped, an expectedly timely (and incredibly optimistic) complement to 2020’s BLM response. It’s not cohesively great but there are some inspired images, especially towards the end.

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DarkImbecile
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Re: The Music Video Mini-List

#335 Post by DarkImbecile » Sat Oct 24, 2020 2:33 pm

Shia LeBeouf and Margaret Qualley star in Love Me Like You Hate Me , a very NSFW video for a song by Rainsford (Qualley’s brother) shot by Honey Boy cinematographer Natasha Braier

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thirtyframesasecond
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Re: The Music Video Mini-List

#336 Post by thirtyframesasecond » Thu Jan 07, 2021 12:43 pm

Bit late on this perhaps but Lady Gaga's 911 music video was directed by Tarsem and riffs on Sergei Paradjanov!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58hokts ... dyGagaVEVO

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colinr0380
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Re: The Music Video Mini-List

#337 Post by colinr0380 » Thu Jan 07, 2021 5:18 pm

Imagine if the last thing you saw was an advert for an LG OLED TV! As well as Paradjanov it kind of feels inspired by that Ken Russell sequence from Aria too!

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Swift
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Re: The Music Video Mini-List

#338 Post by Swift » Mon Jan 25, 2021 7:22 pm

U2 have been releasing remastered versions of their videos and early performances this past month, adding a couple each week. Pride (In The Name of Love) looks great in colour. Additionally, The KLF released remastered versions of their videos on New Year's Eve. Their music (also now streaming) hasn't been available since 1992.

Hopefully this is the start of a trend of artists remastering their music videos.

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thirtyframesasecond
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Re: The Music Video Mini-List

#339 Post by thirtyframesasecond » Mon Feb 01, 2021 7:45 am

I was listening to Gossamer by Passion Pit yesterday and remember two of the tracks here had videos - Carried Away features the One Tree Hill actress Sophia Bush, whose relationship with Michael Angelakos seems cute initially, but when it turns argumentative, they find they can't take their words back. Literally. Constant Conversations features actors I vaguely recognise from films/TV like Taryn Manning, hanging out at a swanky party, but Peter Bogdanovich(!) turns up.

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domino harvey
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Re: The Music Video Mini-List

#340 Post by domino harvey » Mon Feb 01, 2021 3:21 pm

Carried Away came in at number 19 on our forum’s list

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thirtyframesasecond
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Re: The Music Video Mini-List

#341 Post by thirtyframesasecond » Tue Feb 02, 2021 11:05 am

domino harvey wrote:
Mon Feb 01, 2021 3:21 pm
Carried Away came in at number 19 on our forum’s list
Excellent! I don't know why I didn't vote for it though!

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colinr0380
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Re: The Music Video Mini-List

#342 Post by colinr0380 » Sat Feb 27, 2021 7:06 am

I revisited the Red Letter Media review of Deuandra T. Brown's era-spanning epic Diamond Cobra Vs The White Fox recently, which appeared to be well on its way to enshrining Brown as the female equivalent of Neil Breen in the modern astonishingly bad filmmaking stakes until the video got taken down from YouTube. However whilst that Red Letter Media video is gone, finding out that Brown also wrote and performed her own songs in the film sent me to her YouTube page, which wonderfully has all sorts of music videos on it!

A lot of them seem to feature Deuandra herself (often as a really sexy celebrity surrounded by fans, in VIP areas, with rich boyfriends or in one astonishing moment trying to better Madonna's Rain video!) and its hard to say that many of them work musically, lyrically or even in terms of dance moves. But they are getting deep into that 'so bad its actually becoming good again' territory! I kind of love the way in which Deuandra keeps trying to be sexy (but ends up gurning) or throwing gang signs (which looks plain silly), which nicely undercuts all of the celebration of vapid narcissism that is probably the actual intended goal! I cannot take anything in these videos seriously at all, but that makes it all more charming in a way!

I have to admit that even a bit off-key some of the songs are quite catchy, albeit in a terrible way! I'll Do Me is what specifically pushed me to tracking down potential music videos after hearing it in one of the Diamond Cobra Vs The White Fox scenes and being unable to stop giggling at the "huppity-up-a-uh-a-huppity-up" chorus!

I won't go through all of the videos but I think I love the two videos about Deuandra being annoyed by men the most. Stuck In His Ways as a song is almost ear-bleedingly bad but the video is hilarious (especially the inordinately happy backing dancers!) and I love the wonderfully subtle body language used to convey frustration with the boyfriend taking her cooking for granted:
Image

And I just have to highlight Spoil Me, which is the one that seems to have Deuandra taking on Madonna. I think I like this video the most, from the shadow of the camera on the car door in the opening scene before the song starts, to the sheer range of pouting expressions that our main character goes through, to the jawdropping image of lounging on a car bonnet with legs spread wide! But more than anything I kept thinking this could make a wonderful double bill contrasting against Dawn Davenport in Female Trouble! It makes me wish that John Waters was still making films and would be able to take Brown into his stable of actors!

I suppose you have to admire the confidence (guts? moxie? delusion?) to put something like these videos (let alone the feature films!!) out there, and whilst they do make me laugh at some of the ineptness going on, I still have to thank Deuandra T. Brown for managing to cheer me up!

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colinr0380
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Re: The Music Video Mini-List

#343 Post by colinr0380 » Sat Mar 06, 2021 11:52 am

The Heinrich Maneuver, an interesting 2008 collage video for Interpol that seems to be the last work to date of E. Elias Merhige, director of Shadow of the Vampire and Begotten. Though apparently a new short Polia and Blastema is completed and awaiting distribution. Sounds like a good opportunity for a boxset of his works!

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colinr0380
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Re: The Music Video Mini-List

#344 Post by colinr0380 » Sat Mar 13, 2021 6:54 pm

This is an interesting example of contrasts: the dark and quite impressive one take video of Roses by SAINt JHN and its more upbeat remix.

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colinr0380
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Re: The Music Video Mini-List

#345 Post by colinr0380 » Sat May 29, 2021 5:08 am

Lowry_Sam wrote:
Fri Feb 14, 2020 11:03 pm
After watching the Call On Me video, Youtube's algorithms pointed me to Marie Davidson Work It (Soulwax Remx), for anyone nostalgic for 80s aerobic videos. It definitely inspires me to get up off the couch & go to the gym.
The Are Sounds Electrik channel has posted another great video that similarly blurs the line between instructional exercise tape, dance routine and softcore pornography in Low Impact Cardiovascular Workout

(I just love that all these exercise routines have elements of classic dances within them, from the can-can in Work It to the jazz hands in this latest video!)

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brundlefly
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Re: The Music Video Mini-List

#346 Post by brundlefly » Tue Jun 22, 2021 3:36 pm

Bertrand Burgalat, "Rêve capital" (d. Blandine Rinkel).

Those woozy, well-dressed wee hours. Sometimes all you can do is sit back and watch.

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colinr0380
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Re: The Music Video Mini-List

#347 Post by colinr0380 » Mon Jul 19, 2021 4:46 pm

colinr0380 wrote:
Sun Apr 12, 2020 4:44 am
I'm cross posting a bit with the post on the Animal Crossing thread, but the exploration of the "Dad" YouTube channel has led me to the great Madeon remix version of Yelle's Que Veux-tu video, along with another version of Madeon's Pop Culture mash up which is sort of occupying the opposite end of the spectrum to the Tsai Ming-liang Walker films!
OK this is just getting bizarre now: after Nathan Barnatt did the above music videos and then was deeply involved with the meta-fictional dystopian sci-fi themed Dad channel, which has spread out and invaded virtually all internet content, his latest venture seems to involve appearing on America's Got Talent!

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The Music Video Mini-List

#348 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Jul 27, 2021 10:02 pm

Just stumbled across the video for Lisa by Don’t Stop Or We’ll Die (aka the band formed by comedians Paul Rust, Harris Wittels, and Michael Cassady), and it’s a curious slice of slapdash absurdism- the kind of video that’s so dumb it’s brilliant

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colinr0380
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Re: The Music Video Mini-List

#349 Post by colinr0380 » Thu Aug 12, 2021 1:32 pm

This was an interesting find: there was a short film collection released in 1989 called Songlines that visualised the album The Breathtaking Blue by German band Alphaville and features some interesting directors amongst the line up:

Middle of the Riddle by Christoph and Wolfgang Lauenstein, which when it was retitled Balance without the music won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short. The pair would go on to work in the animation department for Tarsem's 2006 film The Fall and later direct their own animated feature, 2018's Luis and the Aliens and Spy Cat
Romeos, an Australian entry directed by Ian Pringle (later producer of Romper Stomper) and featuring an early role for Noah Taylor (a couple of years past his debut in The Year That My Voice Broke and who the same year as this video would star in Pringle's film The Prisoner of St Petersburg)
Mysteries of Love from veteran music video director Alex Proyas, still at this point a few years away from his first feature film, The Crow. It kind of has all of his traits of his later features, such as time-spanning tragic relationships, fateful communications, ripping down wallpaper to find out the awful truth behind the walls of reality (Spoiler: in the later films its usually involving aliens!) and some mystical objects!
Patricia's Park directed by Godfrey Reggio, which is pretty much Koyaanisqatsi (including a few shots directly from the film) just with a different score than Philip Glass!
Summer Rain which is the first directorial credit of Susanne Bier and featuring an early appearance by Sofie Gråbøl

and

For A Million (NSFW) directed by Aleksander Kaidanowsky, probably better known for playing the title role of the Stalker in Andrei Tarkovsky's film.

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colinr0380
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Re: The Music Video Mini-List

#350 Post by colinr0380 » Sun Aug 29, 2021 5:06 am

Another wonderful mash up of classic film and music from the Are Sounds Electrik? channel, which takes Leonid Kvinikhidze's 1978 TV film 31st June and combines it with three wonderful tracks to compress the story. In its time travel story it is nicely combining with my current reading of Daphne du Maurier's The House on The Strand which is also about romantic 'time travel', although 31st June itself is based on a J.B. Priestley novel!

I love it when experiencing one thing sends me spinning off into a number of different new and unexpected directions, and this single video has sent me off to look for the film, add the Priestley book to my 'to read' list, subscribe to the YouTube channel of that guy doing the excellent cover versions of Kraftwerk, and introduced me to two new song artists on top of that! That was quite an impressive feat!

(By the way, the blonde actor in the later sections of that video? Alexander Godunov, the dancer for the Bolshoi Ballet who a year later would defect to the United States. Whilst there he went on to make memorable appearances in a couple of films: as one of the main Amish farmers in Peter Weir's Witness and perhaps most notably as the 'German' bad guy Karl in Die Hard!)

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