Spectres of the Spectrum

"Spectres of the Spectrum" is one nut job of a movie, which purports to tell how the future can be told through the noise of the past. It is made up of every possible and impossible clip of old movies that deal with both real science and fake science. All of it is jammed together with an insane narration by three voices who go on babbling for nearly 91 minutes thus making an effort to tell the tabloid story of "secret rays coming from outer space"; these secret rays are actually electromagnetic ones and as we all know so well they contain minute amounts of mysterious formulas only true advocates of the space brothers would know. Now, some of this is fun, but after a half hour it begins to wane. Some may say more is better, but for this reviewer I can get more of a thrill from listening to Corla Pandit's ruptured organ music on my own while I thumb through the pages of a thrift store copy of Dianetics. Those who have a tendency to receive messages from wind blowing out of their TV sets will certainly have a great time watching this. Others will definitely want at least 8 or 9 martinis to make the adventure worthwhile.

Loved the ideas of the film and how it was put together. Only negative aspect was there was so much information so tightly condensed, I wasn't able to absorb all of it. But after hearing Mr. Baldwin speak when he premiered it at my college, that was most likely a character trait of his. If you get the chance to see it, do so. If you get another, go again.

This is movie is a great example of psychedelic info-tainment. Obviously done on a negligible budget, the filmmaker pulls the viewer into the raw ether of this electromagnetic cinema verite. He puts forth an amazing amount of sonic and visual information with an emphasis on the synchronous relationships already connecting the subject matter(?) being dealt with. Plus, he ties it together with a super-rad sci-fi plot line. I really like the some of the acting as well. As strange and amusing(novel) as this movie seems, it also has a strong visual progression that keeps it rolling along nicely. A great ride! I enjoy this movie more each time I watch it. Take back the spectrum!

Initially, this film is very hard to take seriously, both for its relatively heavy use of noise-imagery and static which remind me strongly of experimental films (some of which I've made), and secondly because of an odd voice-over claiming doom and gloom in a way that calls back images of terrible sci-fi shows from the fifties and sixties with people running around in plastic suits.

Very soon afterwards, the film takes a turn for the serious, but still holds on to both the headache-causing flashings of distorted images with a couple of characters (ironically, both are epileptic) who often quote those same bad sci-fi features.

However, in order to add a certain element of the profound, the film takes images from our entire history of filmed and televised images and combines them together into a story of the world's slow suffering from the over-abuse of wavelengths by humanity. This abuse is reflected in everything imaginable, from religious ideologies of tapping into the meaning of the Universe, to scientific endeavors to gain free energy from all the Earth, to economic globalization and multimedia conglomeration. All sent with various examples and historical contexts to remind me of the advice, "If you're going to lie, provide as much truth as you can in the midst." Moments in the movie occur that, almost, touch upon a documentary-like air that makes the entire movie very foreboding...

...and yet then the characters come in and construct cheesy time-travel devices and run around the Universe yelling and being annoying and talking about "hidden messages" and "saving the spectrum" and it all kind of falls apart.

All in all, because I'm very interested in avant-garde styles of cinema, it's not a bad try. It's just that it is very overstimulating (I wouldn't be surprised if everyone else in the audience got the same headache I received from it, and it's ironic that there's no way an epileptic could watch this) and eventually disappointing. A good start, but could have used a bit of rewriting to give it a much more serious tone.

--PolarisDiB

This movie reminded me of Wax, or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees ( http://us.imdb.com/Title?0105791 ). The very loose plot was used to frame various footage that's related to electricity. Overly kitchy in many places. Sure, it's funny the first time when the main character (Boo Boo) imitates old-school sci-fi heroes, but after a while it becomes tiring.