TALLIE MARA MEDEL

This Thursday is a big night for us. Can’t you tell?

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 16:29:46 -0400

This Thursday is a big night for us. Can’t you tell?

I love John Early, I love Shonali Bhowmik, I love Kate Berlant,...

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 23:29:04 -0400

I love John Early, I love Shonali Bhowmik, I love Kate Berlant, and by the end of the night I will love everyone.

danieldanielblog: edsonsdisasterbutton: Passion Pit | “Cry...

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 00:40:06 -0400

danieldanielblog:

edsonsdisasterbutton:

Passion Pit | “Cry Like A Ghost”

woooo, people are already GIFing the partsof our video where our effects were the messiest, so now you can really study how crappy our masks and transitions truly are. <3

THANKS DANIELS

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 13:21:27 -0400

THANKS DANIELS

CLEAR EYES FULL HEARTS CAN’T LOSE

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 18:49:35 -0400

CLEAR EYES FULL HEARTS CAN’T LOSE

Amy Taubin at Artforum has been one of our biggest champions for The Unspeakable Act. Anthology...

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 11:07:19 -0500

Amy Taubin at Artforum has been one of our biggest champions for The Unspeakable Act. Anthology Film Archives is showing 8 more shows this week. I hope my New York area friends can attend.

Brother’s Keeper

03.03.13

Dan Sallitt, The Unspeakable Act 2012, digital video, color, sound, 91 minutes. Jackie (Tallie Medel).

I REMEMBER THINKING as I watched Dan Sallitt’s The Unspeakable Act at the 2012 BAMcinemaFest that it’s an American version of an Éric Rohmer film. The comparison was validated by the final credit, a thank you to the French master of movies as conversations on morality and ethics, where light—from the sun, the moon, or a carefully placed lamp—often has the last word. Nine months later, a more immediate comparison comes to mind: The film is an antidote to Lena Dunham’s Girls.

The unspeakable act of the title is sister/brother incest. Seventeen-year-old Jackie (Tallie Medel) is in love with her eighteen-year-old brother Matthew (Sky Hirschkron). The two siblings live with their mother and slightly older sister in a modest but quite lovely house with a lawn, trees, and a front porch in a Brooklyn neighborhood that is neither hip nor gentrified. There’s another brother who’s living abroad, and with whom the mother communicates by letter. She’s a writer who never publishes—a woman of many words, few of them spoken.

For Jackie, her brother Matthew is what the literature of romance categorizes as “the impossible object of desire.” Since Matthew is determined to find someone from a different gene pool to share his life with, his imminent departure for Princeton precipitates a crisis. Jackie doesn’t want to accept that it is the beginning of the end of their intimacy, which has been, as far as actions are concerned, entirely platonic. “Your brother is very conservative,” their mother remarks apropos of something else, but Jackie understands that the comment is directed at her. She longs for her brother to stay with her forever because he is the person with whom she is most closely bonded, but, temperamentally, he couldn’t be less like her. He’s the self and the other rolled into one.

After Matthew leaves, Jackie becomes seriously depressed. Mom suggests psychotherapy and, hallelujah, the therapist doesn’t prescribe drugs. Instead, it’s the old-fashioned talking cure, and, initial resistance notwithstanding, Jackie thrives. Medel is a remarkable young actress who conveys Jackie’s complicated thought processes and emotional responses—both subtle and bold—with fluidity and a totally lack of self-consciousness. She and Sallitt have created a character who doesn’t aspire to be “the voice of her generation,” but rather to follow her own rigorous path to knowledge, whether anyone loves her for it or not. Wryly commenting on having achieved “transference,” she speculates that she might end up as a therapist herself: “First you wonder how your own head works, and then you get interested in other people’s heads”—a wise and generous enough statement to make her my role model for life.

Anthology Film Archives, where The Unspeakable Act plays through Thursday, is also showcasing Sallitt’s earlier features: All the Ships at Sea (2004), Honeymoon (1998), and Polly Perverse Strikes Again! (1986). Over the years, Sallitt has accumulated a dedicated group of supporters, who champion his films because they are about serious adults trying to articulate problems that aren’t at all cool (religion and faith; sex and friendship). I find Sallitt’s films prior to The Unspeakable Act at best miscalculated in their attempt to depict characters who are severely repressed using dour, inexpressive mise-en-scènes, stagey dialogue, and wooden acting. The Unspeakable Act shares many of the stylistic choices of these earlier films. It is framed for the most part in static, medium shots with minimal editing within scenes. It is dialogue-heavy and, with the exception of Medel, the actors sound as if they are uncomfortable speaking someone else’s words. What’s different is that this film is awash in color—dusty rose and soft peach, vivid yellows and greens—and that the light dappling almost every scene is exquisite. It is impossible to separate the inner light Medel brings to the film—she is a radiant actor with a rare gift for being in the moment—from the way that Sallitt and cinematographer Duraid Munajim bring the light of the world to her. But the result is a film as sensuous as it is intelligent. You might think of it as the first real film of Sallitt’s career.

— Amy Taubin

“The Unspeakable Act and the films of Dan Sallitt” runs through Friday, March 8, at Anthology Film Archives in New York.

Tonight begins the retrospective of filmmaker Dan Sallitt at Anthology Film Archives:...

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 12:13:07 -0500

Tonight begins the retrospective of filmmaker Dan Sallitt at Anthology Film Archives: http://anthologyfilmarchives.org/ My face is on the site’s slideshow because this is The Unspeakable Act’s NYC theatrical run. Dan makes great films. I’ll be at the theater for several Q&A’s which I’ll post here.

COCOON CENTRAL DANCE TEAM at long last is united with Marc...

Sun, 03 Feb 2013 19:41:38 -0500

COCOON CENTRAL DANCE TEAM at long last is united with Marc Osborne Jr, my amazing buddy with the camera tricks, and DJ ALTERNATIVE who makes wonderful music you can download here. Hometown kids! Ketchikan won the talent ratio!

Special secrets: We shot in Ketchikan, Alaska at Ward Lake. This was on Eleanore’s birthday after a hike up Deer Mountain, with face paint. The reason for the visit was our fourth member’s wedding. Caity and Brant are in love and they live on a fishing boat. Friends don’t let friends eat farmed fish.

CCDT :: BROAD CITY :: DEC 12 @ UCBT

Wed, 12 Dec 2012 08:59:53 -0500

cocooncentraldanceteam:

Ilana Glazer + Abbi Jacobson are the bad ass bitches of BROAD CITY. They are reppin’ the breast and the brightest of women in comedy. These gals are in the process of shooting a pilot for COMEDY CENTRAL based on their webseries!!!!!!

COME SEE MAGIC LADIES. COCOON FOR 2 SPECTACULARS.

MAGIC MAGIC MAGIC MAGIC BITCHIN’ MAGIC

THANKS MELISSA!

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 13:31:22 -0500

THANKS MELISSA!

Not to toot my own horn, but toot-toot-toot! PART III houses a...

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 09:36:03 -0500

Not to toot my own horn, but toot-toot-toot! PART III houses a hotbed of talent that we’re lucky to call part of COCOON CENTRAL DANCE TEAM’s sitcom. The New York Television Festival didn’t cut us a deal with Comedy Central, but they’re just going to have to live with that. Leslie Guyton, Zac Palladino, Zeph McDonough, Sasheer Zamata, everyone you’re about to see in this dance class is ace.

Catch up on PARTS I & II! We present PART III of COCOON CENTRAL DANCE TEAM!

Wow, that MarkMorrisAddict69 sure took us a down a million...

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 09:20:30 -0500

Wow, that MarkMorrisAddict69 sure took us a down a million notches in PART 1. What a dingaling. Lucky for us, there’s boys abounding to lift us up! Featuring the hilarious Pat Landers, Joe Garden, Steve Figueiredo and Chris Gethard!

We present PART II of the three-part sitcom COCOON CENTRAL DANCE TEAM! NYTF 2012, how you nixed this weird thing I’ll never understand!

I think about moving a lot, and then COCOON CENTRAL DANCE TEAM...

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 09:14:40 -0500

I think about moving a lot, and then COCOON CENTRAL DANCE TEAM does another show and I’m like I can’t leave. This was our submission to the New York Television Festival, which I’m still amazed we didn’t win soundly, because this is crazy.

We present PART I of our sitcom COCOON CENTRAL DANCE TEAM! With the sexy help of Timothy Whitney and Alex Fischer!

cocooncentraldanceteam: BIG PURCHASE x3 Cocoon can plainly...

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 12:34:25 -0400

cocooncentraldanceteam:

BIG PURCHASE x3

Cocoon can plainly state, we’ve been waiting to order these for at least 15 years.

#followyourdreamsfriday

TONIGHT: THE MOON 72ND SHOW AT UNION POOL

Tue, 21 Aug 2012 09:26:19 -0400

TONIGHT: THE MOON 72ND SHOW AT UNION POOL:

themoonshow:

Summer can be a turbulent time for many: wave pool operators, emergency room doctors and the dozens of water-park enthusiasts shuttled so hastily between the two. But here on The Moon, waters are calm like a Sea of Tranquility! It’s time to quit worrying and come on down to Union Pool…

TONIGHT 7 PM UPRIGHT CITIZENS BRIGADE 307 @. 26TH STREET BTW 8TH...

Thu, 16 Aug 2012 11:11:02 -0400

TONIGHT 7 PM UPRIGHT CITIZENS BRIGADE 307 @. 26TH STREET BTW 8TH & 9TH AVES COCOON CENTRAL DANCE TEAM: THE RECITAL

Physical comedy has the ability to transport audiences in a way few other forms of performance can, and Cocoon is nailing it. Sunita Mani, Eleanore Pienta and myself have a SPANK tonight, and if you are New York-based, you oughta come. This half hour show is an audition for a run at the theater, an institution that’s been really good to us.

$5, ART WAKES UP SLEEPERS

CCDT on ENTERTAINING THE BARTENDER

Sat, 11 Aug 2012 12:04:27 -0400

cocooncentraldanceteam:

COCOON makes a sickening debut Monday on ENTERTAINING THE BARTENDER, hosted by the truly radical Jena Friedman. Featuring

KATE MCKINNON (SNL)

NIKKI GLASER (MTV’s upcoming ‘The Nikki and Sara Show’)

KURT METZGER (Comedy Central Presents, Ugly Americans)

PHOEBE ROBINSON ((New York Underground Comedy Festival)

LIBERTY HALL AT THE ACE HOTEL / 20 W. 29TH ST. @ BROADWAY / $8

If laughing isn’t enough, know that the lobby of the Ace Hotel is full of models. MODELS.

We’ll SPANK! you this August 16th at Upright Citizens...

Wed, 01 Aug 2012 13:28:36 -0400

We’ll SPANK! you this August 16th at Upright Citizens Brigade with a full-length dance recital featuring glitter, kicks, stage make-up, hair gel, full-color video, and a room full of magic.

If you missed our show at THE PIT this past March, here’s round two in our beloved UCB. Come to the show and maybe we can have a full run at Upright Citizens Brigade!

WE GIVE YOU MARK TWEEN It’s because of CRAIG...

Wed, 01 Aug 2012 13:09:03 -0400

WE GIVE YOU MARK TWEEN

It’s because of

CRAIG KELLER

JEFFREY GRADONE

SUNITA MANI

TODD REICHART

a COCOON CENTRAL DANCE TEAM original short

Tue, 31 Jul 2012 01:13:06 -0400

a COCOON CENTRAL DANCE TEAM original short