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Burning ants

YOU'LL FEEL AN airy, almost religious elation as you witness a 1959 Cadillac soar down an open straightaway, past a thunderstruck crowd, and into a flaming pyramid of televisions. An even richer whoopee will then move you, dear viewer, when the symphony plays again in slow-mo: bursting cathode tubes, a pyre of mangled wood panels, glass, tangerine flames, and smoke – all pledging a full-scale "fuck you" to television's tyranny. It's sensationalist. Pornographic. So unquestionably American, it has to be done on Independence Day, 1975, a year before our bicentennial birthday. And artist-architect troupe Ant Farm, progenitors of this aptly titled Media Burn, wouldn't have it any other way.

These are the same wise guys who invented performance architecture, charged with the environmentally sound idea to build houses out of inflatable plastic, while filming themselves (poorly) in the process. Three decades later, Ant Farm cofounder Chip Lord (now chair of film and digital media at UC Santa Cruz) puts it all on Ant Farm Video (Video Arts, $29.95), along with infamous works such as Cadillac Ranch 1974/1994 and the aforementioned Media Burn. Notable extras include a cannabis-heavy tribute to Warhol in Ant Farm's Dirty Dishes, a DIY guide to Inflatables Illustrated, and a kangaroo tour of OFF-AIR Australia.

Time has given these artists plenty of opportunities to gain notoriety. In 1994, 20 years after Ant Farm drove 10 Caddys into the ground and called it art, they threw a "media event" to celebrate Cadillac Ranch's iconic status. Six years later, the artists – crustier and crazier with age – opened their Time Capsule, a refrigerator (or "icebox," to you old-schoolers) sealed back in 1972 with items like feminine hygiene spray and Carnation Breakfast Tea. Just last month, the Berkeley Art Museum ended its "Ant Farm 1968-1978" exhibition, replete with blueprints, photos, Media Burn's rocket-Cad, and other such treasures.

Scholars often have more to say about Ant Farm's work than the members themselves, who grace us with insightful sound bites like "There's only two kinds of art – bad art and good art. If you decide it's art, it's good art." Exercising that good ol' Dadaist sentiment, the shorts in Ant Farm Video capture the random, annihilative, and generally screwed up behavior of these San Franciscan artists, while skimping on – or flat-out renouncing – production values. Lord does his best to restore their films to a watchable visibility, but staticky breaks and VHS flatness are what give the works their dated charm. (Dave Kim)

Used Otto

Glance at Jean Seberg on the DVD case of Otto Preminger's 1958 Bonjour tristesse (Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment, $29.95) and then look at author Françoise Sagan on the battered paperback cover of her novel: well, at least Seberg has a similar hairdo. That pageboy, dating from the time between her infamous fiery debut under the sadistic – according to Mark Rapoport – gaze of Preminger in Saint Joan and her iconic role in Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless, crowns an errant pixie expression characteristic of Seberg's performance as the film's main character and narrator. No ruminative ennui for this Cecile, who, unlike Sagan's protagonist, brings a distinctly American brattishness to a scheme involving the caddish father she loves too much (eunuch David Niven, strangely cast) and the proper woman he plans to marry (Deborah Kerr). Cecile's ploy – the stuff of melodrama – succeeds all too well. Reversing Hollywood tradition, Preminger films the past in color and the present in damning black and white.

Bonjour tristesse hardly rates a mention in Preminger's laconic autobiography, nor in the chatty tell-all of Arthur Laurents, who adapted then teen-sensation Sagan's book for the screen. Yet the film has garnered a cult of enthusiasts over the years, beginning with Godard and later Andrew Sarris, whose assessment of Preminger has led some critics to place the director next to Douglas Sirk as a Hollywood subversive. While Preminger's always distanced eye for wildly varying subject matter is interesting, Bonjour tristesse is no match for Sirk's Ross Hunter peak period from the same era (1944's Laura, however, is a standard classic.) The film's observations may have been shocking – or designed to shock – at the time, but they don't cut as deep as Sirk's work today. Still, in one vivid moment, Preminger's detached use of Cinemascope gives way to a close-up that exposes and cages the seething animosity between Seberg and Kerr. The trimmings – gowns by Givenchy, title credits by Saul Bass – are exquisite, and camp aficionados can trace lines from Juliette Greco's performance of the title song to Dory Previn's doll-valley laments one decade later. (Johnny Ray Huston)


May 19, 2004