YOUR TUBE, YOUR IMAGINATION

Machinima meets Mullholland:  "night life in second life", a video from pancake Stryker, went up on YouTube in early August, but I passed on blogging about it then because while it's beautifully shot, it's slow moving and vaguely incoherent.  But I've watched it several times since then, and it just occured to me why I kept coming back: because of its languorous pace and eerie dream logic.

Ms. Stryker, I suddenly realized, has managed to create machinima in the style of David Lynch. 

Not just the pacing and fugue-state feel, but the cinematography, the subject matter, and the choice of ambient sound.  Without any overt imitation, it's Lynch essentialized into CGI animation.  You couldn't get more Lynchian if the stripper was joined onstage by a giggling fetus and a backwards-talking midget.  (But then, by SL standards, that'd just be a typical Friday on the town.)  I'm really hard-pressed to think of any machinima, SL-based or otherwise, that calls to mind a major film director, so it's all the more impressive.  (Link possibly not safe for work, unless you work in a tatoo parlor.)

Comments

[reuben steiger]

Thanks for this Hamlet. I'd never seen it before and I agree that it's really something special.