Tuesday, October 21, 2008

An Appeal to My Base

I first discovered the super-cool auteur/rock star t-shirts from CineFile Video some time back, but I mostly forgot about them until yesterday, when Noel at the AV Club posted something about them. Of course, now that I've seen them again I sort of need to buy one. Question is, which one?

There are several ways to go about trying to decide which might be for you. There's always the option of choosing the one that imitates your favorite band of the bunch, although eighties-era metal has never really been my thing, so I don't think that would be my best course of action. In this case, I'd say that going with my favorite director from the choices they've given me would be more my speed. Then there's the option of going with the most willfully obscure, the coolest-looking, or even the funniest. But even exhausting all these options, I've still only been able to narrow it down to the following five choices:

Ingmar Bergman / Iron Maiden


Brian DePalma / Def Leppard

Yasujiro Ozu / Ozzy



Bela Tarr / Black Flag



Lars Von Trier / Van Halen


CineFile also sells three other t-shirts, which I eliminated for various reasons- Herzog because his shirt is the most ubiquitous of the bunch, Scorsese because he's such an obvious choice, and Fassbinder because... well, I dunno. The Fassbinder/Metallica thing is an interesting juxtaposition, but the shirt just isn't speaking to me.

Anyway, folks, here's where you come in. Help me decide which of these shirts I should buy. I've embedded a poll of my five favorites, from which you'll be able to select one.

























<a href="http://www.buzzdash.com/index.php?page=buzzbite&BB_id=124741">Which Cinefile director t-shirt should I buy?</a> <a href="http://www.buzzdash.com">BuzzDash polls</a>











In addition, I'd invite all of you to elaborate on your choices in the comments section. Bear in mind that all input will be considered if not necessarily heeded.

Thanks in advance, buds.

4 comments:

Kza said...

The shirts are frustrating to me, because there's no one perfect marriage of filmmaker and band. Herzog comes close, but I'm ultimately not that crazy about him.

If I were to choose, though,I think I'd have to go with pure graphic design as my guide. And of course, this eliminates everyone except Herzog and Tarr, with Ozu as a distant runner-up. Frankly, most of these are just ugly.

Steve C. said...

The Tarr's about as perfect as you're gonna find, methinks. Aside from the obvious visual qualities (the Black Flag logo has a pleasing simplicity about it), there's something rather gratifying about Tarr, the reigning master of ponderous Euro-formalism, being mated with Black Flag, a band whose (awesome) primary assets for a while had nothing to do with form, until around My War where they pretty much turned into punk-rock Bela.

I'm ultimately not that crazy about [Herzog].

Ooh! Bite your tongue! :-)

Adam Ross said...

My gut tells me Bergman, it's the one that would inspire more people to do a double take. But I also like the Herzog shirt, for some reason it seems like Werner would approve of it.

Jason_alley2 said...

Personally I love them all, mostly because I am as big a metal/punk fan as I am a movie nerd and I love all those bands.

I think I voted for the Maiden though. I also agree that it would invite many double-takes, as would the Herzog and the Fassbinder.