Breaking/Broken News
(Or, something I should have done a real long time ago......)
ELEMENT X LIVES! In fact, it’s about to be healthier than ever. Let me explain…
When this journal started in 2021 the dream was to publish rigorous (or at least long) essays and interviews about films, or tendencies in FiLm CuLtUrE, which I felt deserved more attention than they were getting. This mission was supplemented by the occasional hot take on a hypervisible work of mainstream or contemporary arthouse cinema; in brief, the goal was to address what I felt nobody else was addressing, either in terms of subject matter or critical argument. I feel it’s been successful if obviously (and, to many, disappointingly) sporadic.
What I wanted to avoid, perhaps to my own detriment, was using Element X as an honest-to-God newsletter. Why repackage the same information I was sharing on social media? Especially if it was information about screening series in New York City and I was trying to reach (or expand to) a worldwide audience? Et cetera.
But, as it turns out, in 2024 all economics are disaster economics, and so it’s time to leverage everything. I’m reminded of a (now-shuttered) business on Aurora Avenue, the main arterial of my hometown of Seattle, called Stupid Prices. The billboard promised “Insanely Stupid Prices! Everything Must Go!”
(As a bit of housekeeping, I don’t begrudge anyone for unsubscribing or withdrawing their $upport. I get notified by email whenever this happens and I usually re-subscribe the person in question, if I know them personally, for free, for the rest of their lives/this newsletter. Is that a blessing or a curse? Nobody has complained yet.
As a second bit of housekeeping: I’m 100% sincere when I say the $upport received thus far has not just compensated my efforts to produce criticism on this Substack but also helped keep me physically alive, and thus made it possible to continue my programming activities at large, which is hopefully not nothing.)
Anyway: here are a few contemporary items, hopefully of interest…
Starting this Friday at Brooklyn Academy of Music, I guest-programmed a series in collaboration with The Baffler magazine on the subject of their latest issue, “Facing the Future”. The program engages notions of demographic change and seeks (like the issue) to balloon-pop some of the entrenched stereotypes about voter blocs and generational shifts that are endemic to American political discourse (RIP). Highlights include Christopher Jason Bell introducing the now-quaint G.W. Bush campaign documentary Journeys with George (2002), Rick Perlstein introducing the acid-laced gerontocracy satire Wild in the Streets (1968), a conversation with journalist Gaby del Valle about eugenics and the right wing after Mike Judge’s Idiocracy (2006), a discussion with writer-director Alex Rivera after his 2008 feature Sleep Dealer (2008) and much more. Most of these are screening on 35mm prints, too.
My friends at Screen Slate just published a new zine entitled KILL YR LANDLORD, hopefully self-explanatory. I contributed a piece about MTV’s misbegotten first foray into theatrical cinema, Joes’s Apartment (1996) which is about the friendship shared by Jerry O’Connell and a host of singing and dancing CGI cockroaches. You can read an excerpt here and purchase the zine for $8 here.
I’m also in the new issue of Filmmaker Magazine with a long profile/interview of Stephen Sayadian, the artist/designer/filmmaker who directed such porn cult classics as Nightdreams , Cafe Flesh and Dr. Caligari (1990). This is print-only but feel free to message me for access to a PDF. Or subscribe here!
This month at Spectacle, in Brooklyn, we’re hosting the NYC premiere of a 2K digital restoration of Robert Wynne-Simmons’ long-unavailable Irish horror film The Outcasts (1982). After chasing this restoration for over a year, I’m beyond thrilled we were able to partner with colleagues at the Irish Film Institute on this limited screening engagement, as well as the intrepid boutique distributor Deaf Crocodile, who are releasing The Outcasts on Blu-ray at the end of this month.
Also at Spectacle: one night only (Sunday October 27), filmmaker and artist Winnie Cheung will present their scabrous satire Residency followed by Q+A. This film is not for the faint of heart but its forward-thrusting interrogation of the limits of facile art-world identity politics (and gnashing shot-on-DV aesthetic) have stuck with me since I caught it last winter.
Finally: as detailed in these pages, I’ve been involved in helping restore/subtitle/re-release four incendiary films directed by the French-Martinican playwright and filmmaker Julius-Amédée Laou: two features and two shorts. Thanks to the indefatigable writer and curator Ashley Clark, Laou’s body of work is now streaming on Criterion Channel. Please watch, please rate (if you use Letterboxd), please share. I published some moist-eyed thoughts on the history of this project over on my Instagram, as well.
More soon; thanks for indulging me. And if you’ve made it this far, I do have something I can promise for Element X next week, which is a Halloween-timed review of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, the alleged return to form by my favorite childhood filmmaker Tim Burton. (I’ll tease the piece by saying Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is not a return to form by any definition except insofar as Burton has been aggressively selling out for the last two decades and it’s his first theatrical feature in five years; if anything, the new movie is his most contrite rumination on selling out yet. Longer letter later…)
Current Mood: Optimistic 🥹
Current Music: Metallica - To Live is to Die