After a few days away from the blog, I'm back. Gabriel's in school today. Julia's at school too: A big day this coming Monday for her! Gabriel and I will be aw awone... No fears: We'll have a slumber party and stay up late. Yay!
Book Review:
George Pelecanos' The Cut, his 2011 offering, presents a new hero. Spero Lucas is a vet home from Iraq, an adopted son in a Greek family, working as a private investigator for a criminal defense attorney. He is well-read, athletic, fond of bicycling all over the city, watching old movies, bedding interns. He is an appealing character, grounded and tough, a nice, young twist on the hard-boiled, flinty characters of Donald Westlake/Richard Stark - a man the author means, perhaps too pushily, as a natural hero for our times.
Pelecanos writes terrific dialogue and he always gives even throwaway characters more humanity, more seasoning and color, than most authors would bother to do. The plot here is slight but fast-moving: Lucas goes to work for an incarcerated drug kingpin who wants Lucas to find out who has been stealing from him, which leads to a den of criminals and a father-son pair of rotten cops. I love the way Pelecanos writes but here I think he focuses way too much on characters' clothes and descriptions of Washington D.C. locations. I appreciate how his characters eat and drink in actual D.C. restaurants and bars, travel through actual parks, go to bookstores, but Pelecanos spends far too much time telling us how one character goes up 13th Street, over 14th, etc; it reads too much like a map - and can be a slog for anyone who's not at all familiar with D.C.
(***) out of 5
It's a 1960s kind of week for me on TCM. Here's some thoughts:
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| O'Toole: "I've been robbed more times than a 7-11!" |
- The badly-dated Charly, which won Cliff Robertson a 1968 Best Actor Oscar, is a truly hideous work. An adaptation of Daniel Keyes' popular, much-taught Flowers for Algernon, about a mentally retarded man who undergoes brain surgery and becomes - what, exactly? In director Ralph Neslon's film, we can do nothing but laugh as post-surgery Charly becomes a slightly creepy, robotically-speaking, motorcycle-riding life enthusiast. The only redeeming element is the wonderful Claire Bloom as Charly's night-school teacher (and eventual lover?). It surely isn't the atypically embarrassing Robertson (a fine actor), who is one-note, unimaginative, boring, and silly as Charly. Looking in the archives, I can see that Peter O'Toole (The Lion in Winter), Alan Arkin (The Heart is a Lonely Hunter), Ron Moody (Oliver!), and Alan Bates (The Fixer, which I haven't seen) no doubt had a chore in trying to keep a straight face through the Academy Award ceremony. (*) out of 4
- 1966's Morgan!, which garnered Vanessa Redgrave her first Best Actress nomination, hasn't aged well either, but it's a strangely alluring film, with an odd pull to it. David Warner is the mentally unbalanced title character, flourishing in his world of fancy, persistent, annoying, and creative in his attempts to woo back his wife (Redgrave, a bemused, devilish look in her eye), who has moved on to a more stable (read: boring) man. Director Karel Reisz, who wisely doesn't try to get us to sympathize with loony Morgan, attempts some familiar tricks from the period - speeding up the film, etc. - and it's a damned odd, indescribable Mod-ish bird, but it's entertaining, I'll give it that. (**1/2)
- 1961's Victim is the first British film to ever use the word "homosexual." Dirk Bogarde, in fine form, is a barrister who finds himself the victim of a blackmail ring. Someone is threatening a group of men in London - an actor, a construction worker, a hairdresser - over reputed homosexual behavior and incidents. A tight film, kind of preachy and obvious, but an interesting look at a unique, troubling time in modern English history. (See below) (** 1/2)
Before 1967, when the Sexual Offences Act became law, homosexual behavior in England (and Wales) was a criminal offense. In 1957, a government-sponsored report led by Sir John Wolfenden (Vice Chancellor of Reading University) proposed that homosexual behavior should not be be a criminal offense; such outlawing and punishment impinged on civil liberties. The committee suggested that private immorality was no one's business. At that time, under British laws, homosexual behavior could be punished by either a small fine or life imprisonment.
The government rejected the committee's proposals, despite the Archbishop of Canterbury's agreeing with the Wolfenden group.
However, in 1967, the Sexual Offences Act finally became law. In 1994, the age of consent between consenting male adults was lowered from 21 to 18; in 2000, it was lowered to 16.
Incidentally, Wolfenden went on to become, among his other posts, director of the British Museum from 1969-1973.
Henri Cartier-Bresson (#6)
The Frenchman (1908-2004) who never cropped his images and only shot in black-and-white. He was seen as the originator of photojournalism, of life shot on the run, of the "Decisive Moment." Bresson's life is almost too rich for such a short summary, but here goes:
- rebelled against his strict Roman Catholic upbringing and the bourgeois by joining Surrealist painting circles in Paris
- in 1931, after seeing the work of Man Ray, travelled in the bush in Africa, recording images on a small camera
- began to recognize the spontaneity than can be achieved with the 35mm Leika camera
- in 1937, produced a documentary on medical aid in the Spanish Civil War
- from 1936-1939, worked as film assistant to director Jean Renoir
- taken by the Germans as a prisoner-of-war during World War II
- in 1947, formed the cooperative photo agency Magnum Photos with Robert Capa. They offered global coverage and photos for periodicals all over the world. Bresson shot in Egypt, China, Indonesia, India. He published books of the photos he shot in Europe. Images la sauvette (1952) is his most renowned collection, in which he describes the "decisive moment" - the instant when, within the confines of the photo, the image reveals itself to be significant in the event of which it is part. This was an emotionally incisive moment, when everything aligned.
"The decisive moment, it is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as the precise organization of forms which gives that event its proper expression."
- Henri Cartier-Bresson."
- in the late 1960s, he began to make films
- photographed Mahatma Gandhi 15 minutes before he was assassinated
- allowed to visit and photograph the U.S.S.R. in the 1950s
- photographed China during the Cultural Revolution
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