The artist known as MIA is pretty controversial. The Londoner with a Sri Lankan heritage has always polarised opinion, mixing up musical and creative influences from everywhere, and messing generally with the field of expectations and images.

The video below for her new single ‘bad girls’ is another provocative edit of seemingly divergent images. This time try bad girls, street racers, and Kalashnikov-weilding insurgent-types for size.

Apparently shot in Morocco (though obviously evoking the more troubled environs of North Africa and the middle east), there’s an interesting inclusion of beemers and Alfas making use of the loose render of the dusty roads.

Not sure how we’re supposed to read this mad mashup of cultural forms. We dig it anyhow.

Oh, and she ‘upstaged’ Madonna at the Superbowl. What’s not to like?

Click here to view the embedded video.

As you may have gathered we’re McQueen geeks. We like to regularly share a dose of cultural artefacts that feature the great man — and by now we’ve worked lots of angles on the king of cool.

But for some reason we had forgotten ever to mention his last ever movie.

The Hunter was the 1980 swansong for the profoundly petrol-headed actor. Though it certainly was neither a classic, nor a truly fitting way to end a majestic movie career, it had many plus points.

Our Steve plays a bounty hunter travelling around the states trying to track down bail jumpers — a typically anti-heroic role that he played with that trademark mix of straightforward cool and bloke-ish humour. It’s well-shot and there are a number of funny, characterful support performances.

There is something of the Smokey & The Bandit about it — but that’s not at all a bad thing.

For us of course the main reason to track down this film is to check out the way Steve wears the MA1 flight jacket and jean combo with complete aplomb.

And of course, the way that Steve’s rented Trans Am gets wrecked.

Now that’s what we call a crop circle.

Click here to view the embedded video.

There’s been an acreage of McQueen love from these pages over the last couple of years. Of course, the king of cool was indeed the petrolheaded totem of all Hollywood time.

But the beautiful Paul Newman was, of course, a pretty accomplished racing driver in his own right — and was no slouch in the cool stakes, either.

Newman, the story goes, became seriously committed to driving racing cars after training for his role in the (not very successful) 1969 movie Winning (see trailer below).

He was to play a dangerously obsessed racer alongside his wife to be Joanne Woodward - and trained at the Watkins Glen Racing School to acquire to appropriate racing steez.

Over the next couple of decades He went on to race in everything from the SCCA series to Le Mans, Can Am and NASCAR — and right up to his seventies was deeply involved in the business as well as behind the wheel.

We’re not sure wether he ever had head to head race with McQueen — if there was documentary evidence it would be the stuff of which Autoblog dreams are made!

Click here to view the embedded video.

In a bit of Friday full moon serendipity, we stumbled upon this rather interesting little Danish film that features a rather pretty little Fiat 600.

While it was of course the car that caught the eye, the poster is a nice little bit of car culture in itself.

Not being Danish speakers, we’re relying on the graphic prettiness of the poster, the car and the actress to suggest that you should check it out for yourself.

We’re not sure why the 600 seems to be a little less of a presence in the Fiat back catalogue.

Who knows — perhaps they will eventually extend the super successful new 500 brand into the innovative Multipla format.

Kind of Fiat does Mini brand extension.

Funnily enough, the lead actor looks to me to be the Swedish equivalent of Belstaff poster boy Ewan McGregor.

It’s a bit of a cliché to say that cars are often the stars of many a movie.

But sometimes its not the tyre smoking rubber-laying car-chase moments through cinematic streets that are the lasting impressions.
There was, for example , the spooky Lambo is Roger Moore’s pre-bond performance in the Man Who Haunted Himself..

And Harvey Keitel’s NSX driving trouble shooter was the coolest character in Pulp Fiction.

Dustin Hoffman’s classic portrayal or a privileged kid in his Alfa Duetto is a more immediately iconic moment.

In Louis Malle’s first film Lift to the Scaffold the cars are only outdone by the cool moodiness of the Miles Davis soundtrack.

The strangely balletic duel however, between the 911 and the Alfa Montreal, is ruined by an awful hurdy gurdy soundtrack .

We think that the car driven by the eponymous antihero of The Day of the Jackal is an Alfa Guilietta Spider, but we can’t be sure.

Anyway, it’s a killer car and a killer thriller.

Sometimes its the more fleeting, less in-your-face car characterisations that burn into the brain.

‘Serious film buffs’ often dismiss the admittedly ponderous and indulgent 1968 film from Jack Cardiff that was based on Mandiargues’s quasi surrealistic novel as a slightly ridiculous joke.

But if you dig the aesthetic of the last couple of years of the sixties, you’re interested in the idea of girls on motorbikes being slightly unnerving and subversive, then you really should take the time to hunt it down on your local bit torrent.

The clip below gives a good flavour of the feel of the film. The bike riding scenes are ludicrous but still somehow kinda cool.  The Harley is almost comical and otherworldy in thc context of the French countryside. Marianne Faithful looks pretty and seductive and vaguely sinister in her skintight leather one-piece in combo with the futuristic open face lid.

But, you can’t help but notice the similarities with other films like Easy Rider and countless schlockish bikesploitation movies that equate motorcycles with freedom, rebellion and  sexuality. It’s cool to witness an European take  on the theme, and the main character’s interior monologues are  amusing — and her encounters with randy gendarmes laugh-out loud hilarious.

Perfect viewing for the frustrated biker on a wet Easter weekend.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The long-awaited return of the world of Tron was unveiled recently at the Comic-Con exhibition in San Diego.

The sequel is due to be released some time in 2010 – almost three decades after Jeff Bridges and company burned light cycles around an electronic circuit, thereby filling the heads of children of the eighties with neon-lit futurist fantasies.

If the footage released is anything to go by, the release could be one of the cinematic events of next year.

We think these are the best road movies ever made. Disagree? Then let us know…

Two Lane Blacktop

James Taylor (yes that one) and Dennis Wilson (from the Beach Boys) and a tricked out sleeper of a 55 Chevy. Put them together and you have the coolest road movie ever.

National Lampoon’s European Vacation

Chevy Chase and family cross the Old Continent as the perfect approximation of the American güber. A classic of comedic errors.

Duel

Spielberg’s first feature and a terrifying ode to sustained road rage.

Thelma and Louise

In the top ten because girls love it. And so do we.

Easy Rider

Definitive Americana with Jack Nicholson and Peter Fonda.

Little Miss Sunshine

Sweet, succinct and features a killer VW camper. What’s not to like?

Motorcycle Diaries

The reason Che Guevara is an icoc of revoution is because he knew how to live a true road trip.

Mad Max

Classic Aussie apocalyptica before Mel Gibson went weird.

Sideways

Two men of a certain age get on the road to taste fine wine and have menopausal misadventures. The Saab 900 convertible reflects the washed-up nature of the main characters. Elegant and touching.

Vanishing Point

Extreme GTO-pedalling in the mode of the sexually promiscious seventies.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Depp as Hunter S Thompson into the Dantean inferno of Vegas. On Acid.

Feel free to tell us your additions to the list…

]]> http://www.influx.co.uk/wordpress/features/top-ten-road-movies/feed/ 21 http://www.influx.co.uk/wordpress/blog/steve-mcqueen/ http://www.influx.co.uk/wordpress/blog/steve-mcqueen/#comments Tue, 26 May 2009 13:43:29 +0000 Mike Fordham http://www.influx.co.uk/wordpress/?p=2861

Steve McQueen was the coolest man that has ever lived. The fact is obvious, and is referenced constantly by the motoring press.

But, until recently, I couldn’t really get my head around what was so cool about the man.

This morning, here in Los Angeles, I stumbled upon one of the reasons. I saw a pretty cool dune buggy parked outside a mad mexican restaurant with a twenty foot fibreglass Mariachi on top (run of the mill here, worthy of a picture in my oh-so-english eyes).

Back in my office whilst doing some research on the things I came across this great clip from Bruce Brown’s 1971 film On Any Sunday.

In case you’ve never heard of the film, it’s a beautifully evocative documentary on American desert racing by Bruce Brown (who funnily enough given the California context made his name shooting seminal surf movies like The Endless Summer).

Watching the clip, the thing that stands out (apart from how good looking the man is), is that he refers to his dune buggy as his ’ emotional outlet’.

It’s obvious to anyone passionate about these things is displaying something more than a penchant for mechanical jiggery pokery. They are displaying the sort of lust for life that always was and always will be ‘cool’.

Turns out that the coolest man in the universe was cool not just because he played cool people in cool films and looked the business.

He was cool because he wasn’t afraid to stand up and say that his passion for racing, engineering and all things mechanical reached somewhere deep in his soul.

If only more of our racing heroes could be so candid.

Click here to view the embedded video.

]]> http://www.influx.co.uk/wordpress/blog/steve-mcqueen/feed/ 0 http://www.influx.co.uk/wordpress/blog/san-diego-to-santa-pod/ http://www.influx.co.uk/wordpress/blog/san-diego-to-santa-pod/#comments Thu, 12 Mar 2009 14:54:11 +0000 Mike Fordham http://www.influx.co.uk/wordpress/?p=968

In 2005 Dreams of Legends, charted definitively Hot Rodding’s place in popular culture. With each message of resource-depletion and angst about a petrol-free future, the world it that gave it birth looks more exotic and less easy to understand. It’s an important document of a disappearing world.

My uncle used to take me to Santa Pod when I was a kid. Little boy dreams of freedom are born. We’d roll up the M1 in a yellow Triumph Stag with black leather seats. He stank of Brut 33 and his girlfriend’s short cropped fur coat reeked of rot in the drizzle. I remember the mud in the fields around the strip and the jacked-up, primer coated Ford Anglias rolling on fat slots. I remember the Shergar Burgers with stewed onions and the static electricity generated by polyester T-Shirts. I remember things gathering to a climax toward the runs of the top-fuel Funny Cars driven by big, boom-voiced Americans with names like Garlits and Cherry. I remember the thunder and the glory of six second runs and the terrible fascination for superchargers and the half-naked girls on the Custom Car Magazine stand.

Sexuality and V8 engines were intertwined in me from the beginning.

For me back then America was a brightly glowing if distant light. It was a light that reflected cool cars, juicy burgers, Evil Kneivel, butter concrete skate parks and girls in hot pants and roller skates. Northamptonshire was spiritually San Diego. It was possible to glimpse the essence in this down-at-heel nation of what Hot Rodding really meant. It was about building something from scratch rather than simply consuming. It was about taking the materials available to you and reinventing them for your own ends. It was Speed. Action. The Future. The drag strips of Southern California were completely alien to me. But somehow I understood.

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