Atomic TV

This 2-hour retrospective mixes trailers and highlight clips from last year’s film program with interviews of the stars and directors who were on hand for the inaugural 1999 Maryland Film Festival–including Jill Hennessy (formerly of TV’s LAW & ORDER), exploitation diva Doris Wishman (director of the Chesty Morgan films “Double Agent 73” and “Deadly Weapons”), festival director Jed Dietz, and local auteurs made good like Mark Pellington (Arlington Road), former stand-up comic Dan Rosen (The Curve), Steve Yeager (Divine Trash) and Barry Levinson (who presented his documentary work-in-progress, Diner Guys). Also featured are highlights from the various “film shorts” programs, including two media collages from Baltimore’s Martha Colburn, Hopkins film student Todd Rohal’s “Knuckleface Jones,” and producer Suzanne McDonnell’s “Every Night and Twice on Sundays,” a mockumentary about the star of the “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” infommercial. As an added treat for Baltimore natives, MPT’s Rhea Feiken has her past as a local news weatherwoman exposed and ATOMIC TV unearths Ms. Rhea’s starring turn in a sexual harassment training film from the ’70s!

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The 1999 Johns Hopkins Film Festival screened some of the most innovative, surprising and controversial films from the indie festival circuit. But our faves were the lesser-known films of local yockels like D.C.ís Alvin Ecarma and Hopkins film student Todd Rohal. Besides being artists, theyíre fun guys, and their films were among the most popular, laugh-inducing entries at the festival. Atomic TV presents their complete works interspersed with interviews, plus see Alvin shoot guns, laugh at Conan OíBrien and do splits like a woman. Then watch Todd Rohal reduce the history of Film Noir into a 16-minute homage called “Single Spaced,” show hip-hop frat boys dancing in their underwear and tormenting mega-nerd “Knuckleface Jones,” and take viewers on a David Lynch creepout in “Slug 660.” Meanwhile, Alvin Ecarma waxes poetic over his mutt’s declining health in “My Dog Has a Cyst,” recites verbatim the trailer from the 70’s exploitation classic “Ghetto Freaks” in “Me!,”fights crime as comic superhero The Badger in “A Conversation,”blows smoke at the tobacco industry in “You’ve Come a Long Way Baby (A
Long Way To Die!)”, parodies homophobia in “G.I. Joe” and vexes the Vatican with “Sister Mary Blow Job.”

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Join Atomic TV at Artscape ’98 and witness Scott Huffines’ spiritual rebirth (and cohort Tom Warner’s spiritual breech rebirth) inside “Sweetie” (a gigantic, giggling Mrs. Butterworth edifice), meet globetrotting mannequin Bud, TV art cars, body painting, artchicks, kung-fu nuns, hear free-love bohemians discuss masturbation and testicle grooming, hear porn starlet Shayla LaVeux discuss anal love beads, plus listen to music by The Prodigy (their banned “Smack My Bitch Up” video!), French ambient rockers Air (“Sexy Boy”), Jesus & Mary Chain (“Rock & Roll”), 60’s French ye-ye girl Francois Hardy (“Tous les Garcons & Les Filles”) and a marionette medley by Cliff Richards & The Shadows from THUNDERBIRDS ARE GO!

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Atomic TV #13: The “Turning Japanese Part 1″ Episode from Atomic TV on Vimeo.

Atomic TV co-host Tom Warner’s yellow fever gets the mercury rising in this shamelessy fawning open love letter to musical pop stars of the Far East…see every Pizzicato Five video in the world…weather the growling punk onslaught of Guitar Wolf…heed the Mothra-esque siren call of the dynamic-duo divas known as Cibo Matto…let your eyes glaze over to the soothing pop narcotic sounds of Yokohama’s Sugar Plant…and then bask in the Hello Kitty cuteness of Shonen Knife.

Atomic TV co-host Tom Warner’s yellow fever gets the mercury rising in this shamelessy fawning open love letter to musical pop stars of the Far East…see every Pizzicato Five video in the world…weather the growling punk onslaught of Guitar Wolf…heed the Mothra-esque siren call of the dynamic-duo divas known as Cibo Matto…let your eyes glaze over to the soothing pop narcotic sounds of Yokohama’s Sugar Plant…and then bask in the Hello Kitty cuteness of Shonen Knife.

Back to Atomic TV Episode Guide