Cheap The Order - From Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle 3 (DVD) (Matthew Barney) Price

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Customer Reviews of The Order - From Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle 3

A total ripoff! Where the hell is the box set?!
While this particular dvd is great...for those who didn't see the entire series at the theater....this is a great start! Only problem is....IT'S NOT THE ENTIRE SERIES!!!! This dvd sucks because it only shows 30 mins, yes 30 pathetic minutes, of the part that I thought was lame to begin with in the whole series of the Cremaster Cycle! Why not the entire series Mr. Matthew Barney?! When is that ever going to be available to the public? Ever think that maybe it would make you a lot of money in the end for your artistic masterpiece? Why only this part? Where is the rest ? I feel cheated and wish to slap Mr. Barney in the face for being the way he is about not releasing the entire Cremaster Cycle series on dvd....LAME!!!!

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Great Work with Illuminating Commentary
As someone who has seen the entire Cremaster Cycle in order at the cinema, this DVD is highly recomended as a taste of the entire cycle. <
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>The commentary by Barney is rich and detailed, he does not hide behind any philosophical rhetoric and is extremely generous with infomation on the concepts as well as the more practical matters. <
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>But if anyone is just waiting to buy the entire DVD set, forget it. Barney sold (extremely) limited editions of the films in glass cases and mounted on materials pertaining to the films, apparently for around one million dollars each, so there is no way that you will be able to buy a complete film on dvd without going to Barney's art dealer with a big wad of cash, what a pity.

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Homebrewer
The Cremaster Cycle is a series of five films shot over eight years. Although they can be seen individually, the best experience is seeing them all together (like Wagner's Ring Cycle) - and also researching as much as you can beforehand. To give you an idea of the magnitude, it has been suggested that their fulfilment confirms creator Matthew Barney as the most important American artist of his generation (New York Times Magazine). <
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>The Cremaster films are works of art in the sense that the critical faculties you use whilst watching them are ones you might more normally use in, say, the Tate Modern, than in an art house cinema. They are entirely made up of symbols, have only the slimmest of linear plots, and experiencing them leaves you with a sense of awe, of more questions and inspirations than closed-book answers. The imagery is at once grotesque, beautiful, challenging, puzzling and stupendous. Any review can only hope to touch on the significance of such an event, but a few clues might be of interest, so for what it's worth ... <
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>Starting with the title. The 'Cremaster' is a muscle that acts to retract the testes. This keeps the testes warm and protected from injury. (If you keep this in mind as you view the piece it will be easier to find other clues and make sense of the myriad allusions to anatomical development, sexual differentiation, and the period of embryonic sexual development - including the period when the outcome is still unknown. The films, which can be viewed in any order (though chronologically is probably better than numerically) range from Cremaster 1 (most 'ascended' or undifferentiated state) to Cremaster 5 (most 'descended'). The official Cremaster website contains helpful synopses. <
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>Cremaster 3 is the longest (3hrs) and most complex of the Cycle. It charts the construction of the Chrysler Building and looks at the forces of spiritual transcendence (which can in itself be taken as a metaphor). It quotes Lombardi: "Character is an integration of habits of conduct superimposed on temperament ... Character is will, exercised on disposition, thought, emotion and action." We have a mythological prologue, then an Apprentice who scales the Chrysler Building by means of one of the lift shafts and takes part in a Masonic ritual. Before winning his Masonic instruments he must become the master of lust and his own ego. This penultimate stage is set in a section called 'The Order' comprising Five Degrees of Initiation. <
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>The Guggenheim Museum (which houses a parallel exhibition) describes the Cremaster Cycle as "a self-enclosed aesthetic system consisting of five feature-length films that explore processes of creation." As film, the Cremaster Cycle is one to experience in the cinema if you have the opportunity to do so, or to experience and re-experience at leisure on DVD (the boxed set is promised for late 2004 and will be a gem for lovers of art-cinema fusion). <
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>Barney plays the Entered Apprentice and his opponents include the Order of the Rainbow for Girls (who look a lot like the Rockettes), Agnostic Front and Murphy's Law (two New York Hardcore bands), Aimee Mullins, and Richard Serra. Molten Vaseline, dental surgery, a demolition derby by vintage Chrysler Imperial New Yorker cars and a gorgeous creature who is half-cheetah/half woman all figure in this latest edition of Matthew Barney's fever dream. Much of the action takes place in two New York landmarks, the Chrysler Building and the Guggenheim Museum, as well as at the Saratoga Racetrack (upstate NY), the Giant's Causeway (Ireland) and Fingal's cave (the Scottish Isle of Staffa). <
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