Sunday, April 18, 2010

Oddsac - Zero Stars


Oddsac is perhaps the only film that I have liked even less after witnessing a Q&A with the filmmakers, which is a Hell of a statement considering how awful an experience the film is on its own. What is Oddsac? It's the "visual album" by Danny Perez and experimental indie band, Animal Collective. I travelled five hours to New York City to see it, and it was, um, a bit of a let-down.

Watching Oddsac is like being trapped in a stoner's dorm room listening to him recount a dream that only means anything to him, except it goes on for about fifty minutes. Listening to a Q&A with Danny Perez about Oddsac is like listening to a first-year film student expound on the meaning of his "art." At one point he describes a scene in which a family is camping in the woods throwing roasted marshmallows around as representing "the breakdown of the 'nucular' family"... fuck off.

What music there actually is in the "visual album," which is maybe about three songs, is pretty amazing, which makes the remaining forty-two minutes that much worse, because you could be at least hearing something beautiful, but instead it is just a mess of ambient noise and static. And yeah, literally static. What a shame for a "visual album" that starts out so well, with the first sequence featuring one of the songs, and some really interesting images, including the one pictured above. But it only devolves from there, with a few intermittently interesting images. Most of all, it is non-sense, maybe unfair criticism for an extended music video, but how could I say otherwise of a visual experience that includes a seven-minute sequence of television static? And yeah, literally television static. Okay, maybe the whole seven minutes weren't television static; to be fair, about four of those minutes looked more like what you see when you listen to music with Windows Media Player, and there is no video component... you know, those color swirls and such. Not very interesting. Perez points out that there is a computer program that creates images like these, but he didn't use it; he created each one individually by hand, and it took months. Months... he's a real artist. Well, I hate to sound like my father, but Danny, maybe you should get a real job.

2 comments:

  1. ha ha ha.
    I love this review.
    I love the fact that you had to deal with this stinker, so the rest of us don't have to.
    Thanks for taking one for the team.....
    ....What do you think about all the talk about
    Animal Collective being the next Radio Head?

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  2. I think it's boring, kind of like Radiohead.

    ReplyDelete