Nohomogenic

Mayumi Miyata [ft. Cam'ron & Hell Rell]: Holographic War (Exclusive The Mix Hut Mash-Up)
Drawing Restraint 9 Soundtrack
Dipset: The Movement Moves On

In a recent New Yorker, sculptor / director / actor / pervert Matthew Barney was referred to as a "star for attaining stardom," putting him on the same cultural plane as Paris Hilton, Andy Pemberton and Pete Rose. He recently premiered his new "film," Drawing Restraint 9, in the States. It's terrible. Even on the "purely aesthetic" level Bar-heads love to babble on about, it’s a stupefying failure. Now, Cam'ron Giles is not a "star star" (though a few unwarranted shots at, say, Liz Taylor's corpse and Tupac's mom may turn him into one), but he also unveiled a new film that he directed and starred in recently called Killa Season. It too fails.

I'd be surprised if Matt or Cam know each other (I'll leave the potential exchange up to Curio or HC), but they've both painted themselves into intractably dubious corners; pushing their particular pet themes into oblivion, there's no more coke for Cam to push or vaseline for Matt to slice. The two films show their respective egomaniacal auteur playing the fool, dunced, parodying recurring dreams that they now actually think are real. Oddly, there are several bullet-worthy similarities between both two and a half hour opuses that indicate a celestial bonding between their quite different--yet spectacularly the same--startime savants.

+ Cutting. Restraint's infamous climax scene where Bjork and Matt cut each other's bottom halves in some kind of whale sheathing ritual is a symbolic knucklehead: Now they are untethered beings that shall roam the sea freely, huzzah! It's also graphic, but not quite as graphic as the scene in Killa Season where two Sopranos extra wannabes cut-up Cam's first kill in the middle of a convenience store. Both scenes succumb to sub-par special effects--Matt's special-effect blood ruins the moment's supposed "grace" while Cam's cadaver has all the realism of the pick-apart Operation dude. In fact, it would have been way better if they just used Operation.

+ Shitting. Some may cringe at the notion of drug mules excreting heroin in plain view. In Killa Season, Cam can hardly take the sight. But there they are, two otherwise demure women doing their business on some plastic bags before cleaning the drug take themselves. Fittingly, Restraint is more careful with its shit, though the enormous dried-up whale dung that acts as the film's holy grail is of equal importance to the drugs in Killa Season. It’s the circle of life, yo. Dumb out.

+ Anti-Americanism. In a significant Killa Season scene that is being quoted by dread-heads and six-year-olds around the world right now, Cam, talking to his cronies, states "America's not scheduled for us." He's right, which is both good and bad. Based on its Japanese lore and middle-of-the-ocean locale, Restraint's hatred of all things spangled is implicitly clear. To wit, Matt even overdubs his own few lines with the voice of an obviously bed-ridden Yank computer programmer sidled by his own inaction. Still, these political maneuvers are neutered by a loathing spirit that has lost use for reason. Both artists may as well be whacking a Bush piñata that's actually just a horse with a Bush mask on. It's pathetic and they should be ashamed--and then make a movie together.