Watch Dog Star Man: Part I For Free
Dog Star Man: Part I
From a murky landscape, a wooded mountain emerges. We watch the sun. We see a bearded man climbing up the mountain through the snow. He carries an ax, and he's accompanied by a dog. His labors continue. There is no soundtrack. Images rush past - water, trees, and surfaces too close up to distinguish. He struggles. A fire burns. Nature, in long shots and magnified, is formidable and silent. It's tough going; he carries on. In a capillary, blood flows.
| Release : | 1963 |
| Rating : | 6 |
| Studio : | |
| Crew : | Director, |
| Cast : | Stan Brakhage Jane Brakhage |
| Genre : |
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Reviews
Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.
There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.
A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.
The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.
Stan Brakhage made this half-hour short film over 50 years ago when he was in his late 20s. It is the first of four parts, however there is a prologue which runs for almost as long as this first part and Brakhage made a 5th part as well over 30 years after part 4. I wish I could talk a bit more about what was happening, but honestly I have no idea. The camera was so wild and all over the place to understand even remotely what was going on. of course, I could read it, but that's not the purpose of film as medium. You need to understand it from what you see. Occasionally, there were a man and a dog visible, but that's all I could make out. Looked like they were living in some remote era. I am not the greatest fan of Brakhage, but I definitely prefer his kaleidoscope-like animated film that only run for a couple minutes and it baffled me to see how popular this one here is. I found it boring from start to finish and have no plans to ever see it again. Not recommended.
This 5-part montage is clearly a technical masterpiece, but like most surreal art pieces, it is dangerous to conceptualize with any confidence. It is highly recommended that that viewer experience all five parrts as they are certainly related. Although I am ignorant of the technical aspects of filmmaking, this film surely is mandatory viewing for film students since it appears to use every trick in the book for imagery-based, fast-cut filmmaking. Conceptually (as one viewer's take on the film), the film is about a young male in a cold, snowy alpine-like setting and his dog as they work their way along through the cold, harsh, dangerous elements. We experience what hapens in the mind and body of this individual during the ordeal, including scenes of the outdoors, biomedical footage of the inner workings of the body's tissue and organs, interactions between this man and a woman's body, his dog, celestial shots, the birth and first year of a new born baby. All of this is put together with great artistic talent (I was often reminded of work by Paranjanov, Tartovsky and Greenaway but I am not sure that any connection is warranted anywhere except in my own reaction) and depicts one man's fast-paced struggle with all of these experiences. The full-length feature is long and taxes one's attention, but the journey is worth it for those willing to take such an adventure.
You may be bored silly or you may be mesmerised. You might find yourself slipping into a catatonic state. You might glance away from the screen for a moment, but you'd be advised not too. Stan Brakhage's remarkable mythopoetic epic brought back a rush of 8mm memories for me from my childhood. There are incredible images of beauty and there are bizarre images that will have you rewinding the tape to ask yourself if you just saw what you thought you saw. (You did.) Highest recommendation!
This is not a "movie" in any hollywood-sense.Close your eyes, watch as the patterns emerge from the darkness, slip in a few memory stills from the movie of your life, make the white noise as silent as possible in your cranium (no sound in this movie at all, unless your vcr makes a hissing noise), take this seemingly unreal experience and transpose it to film, scratch the film with forks, burn it with lighters, paint on the film, crinkle it, twist it, swallow it whole the way the tibetans swallow strips of cloth to clean their intestines, wash it, reel it and see the movie of your dreams."great" isn't good enough. This film goes off the scale, as we mere humans have no method of measuring the value of such an experience. If I had 30 thumbs they would all be up. If I had to choose from 1 to five stars, I would have to obliterate the stars, turn them into black holes, wait til a few more stars gather round and post them all right here for the world to see::::::::>
