In all honesty, Bastille Day has about as much to do with music as Amy “Crackhouse” Winehouse currently does. Come to think of it, the Bastille—a French prison during the reign of Louis XVI—might’ve made a nice rehab joint. The thing is, a good beat trumps a bad party, no matter the occasion. It holds true for Amy Crimehouse, and it sure as hell counts for Panda Transport, who ring in the holiday with a pair of performances at Zinc.
Kathy Compton—one half of Panda Transport, one-fifth of Straight Punch to the Crotch and one saucy vocalist—left me a copy of Plush Mechanique, the band’s second proper record, last week. Compton and her Panda partner, Thierry Holweck, began recording together in 2006, but hit their stride recently, nabbing an opening spot for mash-up magician Girl Talk and won a bit of love from the music monarchs at The Onion. (Not an easy crowd to please.)
 No bears allowed: Panda Transport plays a rare gig at Zinc to celebrate the release of its new record, Plush Mechanique. |
That the band plans to release Plush Mechanique at a space as small as Zinc is miraculous, a hometown treat thanks presumably to Straight Punch’s increasingly crowded gigs at the bistro franco, and your best reason for celebrating French independence since Daft Punk paired up with Kanye West for “Stronger.” A good deal of the songs on the record buzz with the sort of minimal drum machines and synthesizers that Radiohead swiped from lesser-known techno acts, and more get close to that synth-pop pleasuredome occupied by Death Cab For Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard’s side project, The Postal Service.
| C-VILLE Playlist What we’re listening to “I Found a Reason,” by Cat Power (from The Covers Album)—Originally a Velvet Underground song, Chan Marshall does the melancholy tune justice in this revamped version. “Dark End of the Street,” by The Flying Burrito Brothers (from The Gilded Palace of Sin)—The Grievous Angel himself, Graham Parsons, delivers a heartfelt vocal on this track that was originally a hit for James Carr in 1967. “Got You (Where I Want You),” by The Flys (from Holiday Man) “Bermuda Highway,” by My Morning Jacket (from At Dawn) “Joy,” by Lucinda Williams (from Car Wheels on a Gravel Road) “Do the Standing Still,” by The Dismemberment Plan (from …is Terrified) |
Feedback, the all-powerful, all-knowing music blog at c-ville.com, has a few new releases to take on during the next few weeks—among them Beck, The Hold Steady, and a killer from Old School Freight Train—but head there now for links to a few tracks from Panda Transport, then save your euros and grab a copy of Plush Mechanique at Zinc.
Panda Transport performs on Saturday, July 12 at 11pm, and Thierry Holweck spins a Bastille Day DJ set on Monday, July 14 at 6pm. Hear tunes from Panda Transport at c-ville.com.
Raiders of the Lost Film Program
It’s hard enough being a filmmaker at a school that doesn’t technically have a film department, but Konstantin Brazhnik had it particularly rough during his final year at UVA.
The future of the FilmMakers Society (FMS)—the largest formal organization for film production at UVA, for which Brazhnik served as vice president of production—was largely theoretical for a while; each officer in the society planned to graduate in 2008. And, only a matter of weeks after his final year of study at UVA, Brazhnik was standing in a ring of baby bulls, dressed in a mouse costume, ready to be trampled and gored on French TV.
“They were more like teenage bulls,” Brazhnik says after he returned from his taping of the French game show “Intervilles,” in which he and a partner survived a series of completely bizarre physical challenges. It could’ve been a surreal end, straight from one of Brazhnik’s neon-lit short films like Rubber Ducky—a promising filmmaker annihilated in front of a live studio audience. That’s show biz, right?
You may recall that, along with multiple award-winners Romulo Alejandro and Han West, Brazhnik was part of a group of student film directors at UVA that committed themselves to creating flicks without the forced discipline of a formal major (there isn’t one at UVA). They paired courses like Kevin Everson’s cinematography class, offered through the Studio Art Department, with exhaustive extracurricular shoots. Brazhnik’s efforts paid off, and he was accepted as a fifth-year Aunspaugh Fellow in the art department; his thesis for the fellowship was a 30-minute film titled The Purple Pileus, an adaptation of an early H.G. Wells story.
“It’s such an early piece,” says Brazhnik of the story, “but there was already this very subtle element of the supernatural, the science fiction, that he eventually grew into and became known for as a writer.”
The Purple Pileus is a benchmark for aspiring UVA filmmakers, an unimaginable product crafted from resources that Brazhnik seemingly culled from the violet atmosphere of the film. Filmed in roughly 10 days in a cottage on Ludwig Kuttner and Beatrix Ost’s Estouteville estate, Brazhnik employed a host of actors ranging from local actor Bill Rough to recent Curtain Calls subject Karie Miller. With the help of a crew assembled from FilmMakers Society members, Brazhnik transformed the cottage’s interior into a 1950s home, shot the nail-gnawingly tense film and had it ready for a screening at Newcomb Hall last April, the flick’s shadowy drama getting a presentation that many UVA filmmakers deserve, but few receive.
 Straight shooters: The crew of Konstantin Brazhnik’s The Purple Pileus prepares a scene. |
Currently, Brazhnik is preparing to split town for a real film program at the University of Southern California, a school that counts Steven Spielberg as a trustee and rests comfortably on a $175 million donation from George “Cute CGI Critters” Lucas. “They generate a big amount of the work force in Hollywood, which isn’t necessarily the route I’m going,” says Brazhnik, who said as much to school representatives during an interview. “I said, ‘I don’t know if you’ve seen any of my work, and I understand that being anti-Hollywood is a little ridiculous, but those aren’t the films I want to make.’”
In the meantime, Brazhnik plans to retouch Pileus and send it for storage to the Clemons Library vault—not unlike the one shown at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark—waiting until an official film program cites it as a striking early effort or a scavenging D.I.Y. director at UVA digs it up. We’ll see which happens first.
Coming attractions
While we’re talking cinema, the nonprofit youth media program Light House Studio recently announced the appointment of a pair of local media maestros to replace former managing director Cassandra Barnett. Filmmaker Sam Baker—whose rhyming title is one of many assets—assumes the brunt of Barnett’s work as managing director and brings a decade of film experience to the gig. And Bree Luck, the local actress and director of inmate theater program The Voice Project, takes on grant writing and rallying future directors as Director of Outreach—all while keeping her monthly Charlottesville Lady Arm Wrestler role (“Stiletto Southpaw”!) and planning to direct Eurydice at Live Arts in 2009. Congrats on the new workload, you two!
