Considerations...: June 2012

Friday, June 29, 2012

I'm So Hot!

Word of the day : quiddity : the essence of someone or something
: a trifling point; a quibble
: eccentricity; an unusual personal opinion or habit

Staying cool out there, readers?

Last night, the NFL Network completed its ten-part series about the 100 Greatest Players of the NFL this coming season. Each week, ten players were unveiled (90-81, 50-41, etc.). The list was chosen by the players themselves. Apparently, it's been a very popular poll among players since the NFL Network started doing out a few years back.

As chosen by the players, here are the top 20 players in the NFL:

20) Ray Lewis (LB, Balt)
19) Troy Polamalu (S, Pitt)
18) LeSean McCoy (RB, Phil)
17) Justin Smith (DE, SF)
16) Ed Reed (S, Balt)
15) Andre Johnson (WR, Hou)
14) Jimmy Graham (TE, NO)
13) Jared Allen (DE, Minn)
12) Maurice Jones-Drew (RB, Jac)
11) Terrell Suggs (DE, Balt)
10) Patrick Willis (LB, SF)
9) Haloti Ngata (DT, Balt)
8) Adrian Peterson (RB, Minn)
7) Larry Fitzgerald (WR, Ariz)
6) DeMarcus Ware (DE, Dal)
5) Darelle REvis (CB, NYJ)
4) Tom Brady (QB, NE)
3) Calvin Johnson (WR, Det.)
2) Drew Brees (QB, NO)

1) Aaron Rodgers (QB, GB)

As the football season nears, I'll make my own list(s) of the game's best players by positions (along with predictions, etc.) but there isn't a whole lot I can complain or argue about here. The only thing I would change would be to include Eli Manning in the top 20, even top 10, and would take Haloti Ngata out of it. And, as great as he is, I don't think Ray Lewis, at this point in his career, is the second-best linebacker in the game. The top-5 look pretty accurate, and I was glad to see great players from bad teams (the Vikings, Jaguars) represented. Every team was represented with at least one player on the top-100. The teams with the most players were Baltimore, San Francisco, and Philadelphia with 7; Green Bay and Pittsburgh had 6; New England, the New York Giants, New Orleans, Chicago, and Denver had 5 each. 9 teams had only 1 player on the list, including Cincinnati and Jacksonville. The Tennessee Titans, one of the more anonymous teams in the league, just barely cracked the list, with RB Chris Johnson slipping in at #100.

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The NBA Draft last night was a pretty plum occasion for Kentucky and North Carolina, who had, respectively, six and four, players taken in the two rounds. I thought the Houston Rockets had a great draft - UK's Terrence Jones, UCONN's Jeremy Lamb, Iowa State's Royce White. The Celtics, too, getting Jared Sullinger and two Syracuse big men - Kris Joseph and Fab Melo.

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Julia and I watched Jack and Jill last night, which was a watchably lousy movie. Interesting, random cameos, however: Johnny Depp, John McEnroe, Dana Carvey, Bruce Jenner. And you might not have lived until you've seen the usually serious thespian Al Pacino in his extended supporting role (far larger than a cameo) as himself, who falls in love with Sandler's twin sister (Sandler, of course, in drag) and tries to woo her. If that's not silly and surreal enough, Pacino also gets to sing a Dunkin Donuts theme song. Cuckoo.

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It's been a good week since I've done a profile on Professional Photographer magazine's "100 Most Influential Photographers" list. We need to plow through this list quicker.

Patrick Demarchelier (#53)

Demarchelier was born outside Paris in 1943 who got interested in photography when he was seventeen when, in the seaside town of Le Havre, his stepfather gave him a Kodak camera at the age of seventeen. His photos appear (and have appeared) in Life, Harper's Bazaar, British Vogue, Vanity Fair, Newsweek, Elle; he has also worked for, among others, Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren. He was the first non-Briton to become the official photographer for the Royal Family; in 1989, he was the official photographer of Princess Diana of Wales from 1989 to her death. He has lived in New York since the mid-1970s.

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And finally here's one more entry in my list of the 500 Greatest Performances of All Time.

Albert Finney
as Andrew Crocker-Harris in The Browning Version (1994)

Julia and I saw this for the first time a few years back. Based on Terence Rattigan's play (previously filmed in 1951 with Michael Redgrave), the adaptation stars Finney as a disappointed, disliked, caustic teacher of Greek and Latin at a British public school. The film is little more than a character study about a man who toils away for years and can't see the fruits of his labor, but Finney, as mesmerizing as ever, breaks your heart. There is a scene late in the movie when one of Finney's best students, on the day of his graduation, gives Finney a inscribed version of Robert Browning's translation of Aeschylus' Agamemnon. Finney, touched by this caring act of kindness, breaks down and cries, realizing that he has genuinely touched one student. It's impossible to not be moved by this scene, or Finney. But yet this actor has been a joy to watch his entire career. Acting at its finest.

Images:

http://www.film.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/url.jpg

http://c48743.r43.cf3.rackcdn.com/Images/2009_07/06/0156/532508/e4d2b48d-b7f8-4043-b648-80a8be1a788e_g_273.Jpeg

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgX9j0G7QOvTUceoMJH4Wi5t1Bt6XBllvugJPcao5yXGQpLLZBtrPn1Loe1_TrBzWBHW_qeEyboEC1d8zWk72Vh_byL2qD8xc800twtOPv4mSOGXyISwEohrBsmuZcFAxmsKEBvum00E5g/s1600/p.jpg

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJKUQdCBgZTaiGralTGtRlbeXVEp6DuG7O3tlKvsVV0ZOpDxicAJbKDlxucRo-bk3sSvqwI1FzrQGO3YivNG8Zel2mIxtolSMR1z57ITtavYZAAtmqEw3GexLvsWaGp34CpuAOyGocZ1Q/s400/p1.jpg

http://0.tqn.com/d/movies/1/0/P/L/Y/jack-jill-al-pacino-adam-sandler.jpg

http://www.thefancarpet.com/uploaded_assets/images/gallery/3327/The_Browning_Version_30949_Medium.jpg

Information:

http://models.com/people/patrick-demarchelier

Thursday, June 28, 2012

Eye Doctor Day

Word of the day : precatory : expressing a wish

It's going to be a scorching Thursday here in SE Georgia. On the agenda today: take Gabriel to school, run by the library, take Gabriel to speech therapy, and go to our eye appointments.

Movies Opening This Week:

Magic Mike    Steven Soderbergh's new drama takes us inside the world of male stripping. Channing Tatum, who has been everywhere the last two years, stars as a Tampa male dancer/stripper who takes a young kid (Alex Pettyfer) under his wing and teaches him how to succeed in the business, how to pick up women, etc. The film is earning good reviews. Tatum's producing partner, Reid Carolin, wrote the film, which is somewhat inspired by Tatum's own brief stint as a dancer at 19. It's likely to be earnest and a little cheesy, but the reviewers are praising the performances of Tatum and Matthew McConaughey (as a slick, sleazy businessman) and Soderberg's skill at cutting through the cliches.
Verdict: Mildly Interested

Ted    The trailer looked terrible. Seth MacFarlane, who created the obnoxious, long-running, mysteriously-popular animated TV show The Family Guy, directs his first feature film and voices the title character, a stuffed teddy bear who, due to a childhood wish that came true, can talk and move around like a human - and who generally makes life insufferable for his long-time owner, played as a grown-up by Mark Wahlberg. Mila Kunis, surely the only reason to see this film, plays Wahlberg's girlfriend. I expect raunchiness, violence, self-abuse, crudeness. It's actually getting decent reviews, though some of the major critics (The New York Times chief among them) have panned it hard.
Verdict: Not Interested

Madea's Witness Protection    A.k.a. This Year's Tyler Perry Drag Show That I Wouldn't See if You Paid Me To. Eugene Levy, who plays the same role with the same expressions in every movie, is the CEO of a company that, unbeknownst to him, is running a Ponzi scheme. He enters witness protection and of course ends up in Atlanta... in Medea's house. Perry's films are never screened for critics, who would of course slaughter them. Perry has his fans, though, and this one will probably be a hit.
Verdict: Not Interested

People Like Us A rare thing: A modestly-budgeted studio film released in the heat of the summer, with bankable near-stars (Chris Pine, Elizabeth Banks, once-star Michelle Pfeiffer), about family relationships. Pine plays a NYC salesman forced to go back to LA when his dad suddenly dies. While settling his pops' estate, he discovers that he has a 30-year old sister (Banks) whom he has never met. A good cast - which includes Olivia Wilde, Philip Baker Hall, Mark Duplass, and Jon Favreau - in a well-received (as of now, a 70% rating on Rotten Tomatoes) film directed by Alex Kurtzman, who has been responsible for writing some recent blockbusters: the first two Transformers movies, Cowboys & Aliens, Star Trek, the Fox show Fringe.
Verdict: Very Interested

Take This Waltz Lovely, talented Canadian actress Sarah Polley made a wonderful film in 2007 called Away From Her that was an auspicious directorial debut which contained an Oscar-nominated performance by Julie Christie. She returns with her second outing - the plot concerns a young Toronto woman (Michelle Williams), married to a cookbook writer (Seth Rogen!), who is attracted to a rickshaw driver/artist (hottie Luke Kirby). Matters intensify when the man moves across the street, and the two are stealing away whenever they can. Michelle Williams is a consistently brilliant, up-for-anything actress, and Sarah Silverman is supposed to be good in a crucial supporting role.
Verdict: Very Interested

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Happy birthday, Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), one of my favorite artists. At least a million smart folks know more about Rubens than I do, and there is bountiful information about this essential master out there for you to read about out, but I will take this opportunity to show two of his more famous paintings:

Daniel in the Lions' Den
(at the National Gallery of Art)
Rubens' painting about the Old Testament prophet Daniel who, envied his position as chief counselor to Persian king Darius, who was betrayed by his friends, who encouraged Darius to condemn him to a den of lions. The next morning Darius, suddenly concerned about his friend, opened up the lair and saw that Daniel was still alive, miraculously saved by God. In the painting, the sleepy, yawningly indifferent lions surround Daniel, who gives thanks to the Lord. North African lions kept in a royal menagerie at Brussels were used by Rubens as models. (c.1614-1616)

The Elevation of the Cross
(at the Cathedral of Our Lady; Antwerp, Belgium)
In this resplendent work, the center panel of a triptych, Rubens reveals his influences: the Italian Renaissance artists he studied early in his career in Italy (before he returned to Brussels, where he has his most fertile, twenty-year period), Caravaggio, Michelangelo, Titian, Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The action is self-evident: muscular-bodied men carry the cross on which hangs the pale Jesus. (1610-1611)

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I'm reading an interesting mystery set in 1976 Laos called The Coroner's Lunch, by Colin Cotterill. I know next to nothing about the country of Laos.

It's a landlocked country primarily wedged between Thailand and Vietnam. In 1975, the Pathet Lao, a coalition/organization made of up communists resisting colonialism, sought to take over the sovereign country; Laos had gained independence from France after the French fell to the Vietnamese in 1954. That part of the world was in transition in the mid-1970s and the Pathet entered the capital city of Vientiane and took control, establishing a communist People's Democratic Republic. The new government took draconian measures to centralize decision making, control of the media, round up and jail supporters of the former government, and enforce political control. Almost 10% of the population immediately sought refugee status.

And that's where I'm at now. I think I'm going to like this series.

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And, of course, we need another entry in my list of the 500 Greatest Performances of All Time.
(in English-language film)

Glenn Close
as Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction (1987)

For my money, Close has had two great film roles - here and as the Marquise Isabelle in Dangerous Liaisons - and this is the one she'll be remembered for a century from now. The movie is a potboiler (literally!), an intriguing, manipulative, water-cooler thriller that's a lot of sick fun, but Close, with her terrifying, delusional stare, manages to both juice it up and give it an emotional heft. We see the sadness and the cheated, angry, naked loner behind the psycho. But let's be real here, too: Close gives good crazy and gets one of the great loony lines: "I won't be ignored."

Information:

http://www.nga.gov/collection/gallery/gg45/gg45-50298.html

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/2770.htm

Images:

http://cdn02.cdn.justjared.com/wp-content/uploads/headlines/2012/06/channing-tatum-new-magic-mike-stills.jpg

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/sites/default/files/2012/06/people_like_us_banks_pine_a_l.jpg

http://www.oceansbridge.com/paintings/collections/16-17th-century-european-paintings/big/Peter-Paul-Rubens-xx-DANIEL-IN-THE-LIONS-DEN-xx-NGW.JPG

http://www.thecross-photo.com/images/rubens_elevation.jpg

http://www.worldstatesmen.org/la.gif

http://www.grouchoreviews.com/content/films/3437/1.jpg

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Black. Benjamin Black.

Word of the day : moiety : half ; one of two (approximately) equal parts
; one of the portions into which something is divided; part, component

Well, it's just the three of us again. Or, to be correct, the seven, counting the cats and Daisy. We probably won't have any guests again until the winter, when David comes to visit.

This week's Author Profile is devoted to an Irish crime novelist, one of my favorites:

Benjamin Black

Born: Wexford, Ireland, 1945.

Career: Benjamin Black is actually a pseudonym for Booker Prize-winning novelist John Banville. Banville was educated and went to college in Wexford, Ireland. He had jobs at the Irish airline Aer Lingus as a clerk, as sub-editor at The Irish Press and The Irish Times. From 1988 to 1999, he was Literary Editor of The Irish Times.

I have read no books by Banville, but I have long meant to. His first novel, Nightspawn, came out in 1971 but he didn't really start gaining notice until 1976's Dr. Copernicus, a fictional account of the 15th-century Polish astronomer, the first in a series of fictionalized novels about the inner lives of scientists and their ideas: 1981's Kepler and The Newton Letter: An Interlude (1982). 1989's The Book of Evidence was a finalist for the UK's prestigious Booker Prize for fiction (kind of like their Pulitzer); it is about a scientist's inner thoughts as he awaits trial for needlessly killing a woman.
2000's Eclipse was a praised, existential novel about an emotionally hollow actor who returns to his childhood home by the sea to try figure out who he is. Similarly themed, the Booker-winning The Sea (2005) is about a recently-widowed art historian who returns to the seaside villa his family vacationed at when he was a child.

Banville's novels are reputedly difficult, as the author prefers language and rhythm over plot or characterization. They're usually dense, largely interior, challenging, tough to get into; this isn't a bad thing for some readers.

In 2006, Banville started writing Dublin noir under the Black pseudonym. He did this unexpectedly (his publishers had no idea) and found it liberating to play with character and plot more. On the surface, it was a way to earn money, to achieve financially security to continue to write the Banville novels, which have a limited audience. The inspirations for the books: the existentialist thrillers of George Simenon and, in a roundabout way, the thrillers Black had been reading all his life, from Agatha Christie to James Cain (The Postman Always Rings Twice), from Dorothy Sayers to Richard Stark (The Hunter, made into the great Lee Marvin film Point Blank).

Christine Falls, the first of the Black novels, was an award-winning introduction to murky, politically fractious, nasty 1950s Dublin and alcoholic pathologist Quirke, a large, lumbering man who tends to antagonize everyone he encounters. It's one of the best books I've ever read. A wealthy, Catholic Dublin family has skeletons in its closet, and they're somehow related to the body of a young woman in the morgue - Christine Falls.

Banville enjoys being Benjamin Black and finds it very easy. From an interview in The Paris Review:

If I’m Benjamin Black, I can write up to two and a half thousand words a day. As John Banville, if I write two hundred words a day I am very, very happy. A Banville novel will take me up to five years to write.

To date, there are four Black novels about Quirke and one stand-alone Black novel, 2008's The Lemur, a thriller about a biography gone wrong.

Why You Should Read Him: I'll keep it short here. Simply put, Black makes you feel smart. When you read a Black book, you'll need to keep a dictionary handy, as you'll learn plenty of new words. The plots are layered and dense, but they're fun, and it's ultimately not too difficult to see them through. Quirke should be a composite of every cliche every possessed by a detective - alcoholic, sticks his nose where it doesn't belong, haunted, lost daughter - but Black makes the well-worn cliches feel fresh. The books contain twists and atmosphere so pungent, you can almost smell it and breath it. The author makes you nostalgic for the genre and with a greater appreciation for it. It's literature and genre writing, done with finesse and a lifetime of hard-earned practice.

Banville's novels divide critics; he wasn't a populist choice (to say the least) when he won the Booker. Readers find him digressive, heavy, difficult, too allusive and symbolist. The Black novels appeal to critics and reader, finding a fertile, happy common ground without dumbing down the art.

Books I'd Recommend: I've read three Black novels and would recommend them all. Christine Falls (*****) contains everything you could possibly want in a noir-ish thriller, with plenty of heart and feeling. 2010's Elegy For April (***1/2) finds Quirke on the trail of his daughter's missing friend, a doctor. 2011's A Death in Summer (***1/2) has Quirke investigating the death of a newspaper magnate, in a case that finds Quirke revisiting the orphanage he spent time in as a kid.

Books I Want to Read: The second Quirke outing, 2007's The Silver Swan, and the upcoming Vengeance (August 7).

Author's website: http://benjaminblackbooks.com/aboutauthor.htm

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Day 7 in the 500 Greatest Performances of All Time and it's time to give props to...

Morgan Freeman
as Fast Black in Street Smart (1987)

Let me say straight off that Street Smart is just an average movie. It's about a magazine reporter (bland Christopher Reeve) who concocts a made-up story about a colorful pimp, which is then published and becomes a sensation. A district attorney believes that a pimp who is on trial for murder (Freeman) is the subject of Reeve's story and wants to see Reeves' notes; of course, there aren't any. Freeman's Fast Black, a ruthless, knife-wielding Times Square pimp, agrees to be the subject of Reeve's story (the writer in hot water for concocting a fictional story and passing it off as true), if Reeve will only provide Fast Black with an alibi. It's never believable, but Freeman (who won every critics award imaginable for the role but lost the Oscar to Sean Connery for The Untouchables) is utterly terrifying. This was the first real introduction and major role for Freeman (a decade-long character actor and stage actor) and he is positively beguiling, scary, and quick-witted, as alert and poised as a tomcat. He blows Reeve off the screen, but never overacts, slipping into this role with a sinuous grace. He is a great, multi-dimensional villain and a scene where he threatens one of his girls (well played by Kathy Baker) with a pair of scissors is memorable. This is a rare chance to see Freeman at his loosest and springiest.

Let's do one more today, shall we?

Joseph Cotten
as Uncle Charlie Oakley in Shadow of a Doubt (1943)

Hitchcock provided some great, plummy villain parts for his actors, and this is a good one. Cotten was a terrific actor, not quite a star, who appeared in some classic films: Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, Gaslight, Portrait of Jennie, The Third Man. He never had a better role than he did in Hitch's black suburban comedy masquerading as a thriller. Charlotte (Teresa Wright, at her best) is so happy when her beloved Uncle Charlie comes to town, for she has idolized him for years. She is a bit of a crime buff (a sentiment she shares with her next door neighbor, played by Hume Cronyn) and begins to be a little suspicious when she sees her wonderful Uncle Charlie hiding a newspaper article about the Merry Widow Killer. Is Uncle Charlie... hiding something? Cotten, with his rich, plummy voice, and slightly dried-out air of benevolence is perfect at suggesting there are all sorts of manias roiling beneath his character's avuncular worldliness. He gets one of the funniest, most telling speeches in any Hitchcock film, which I had to provide a link to here. He talks about the merry widows who loiter in the cities:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEoTXa_52A0

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To go or not to go to the Decatur Book Festival, just NW of Atlanta, which runs from August 31 to September 2? A few authors I'd like to see will be there: Michael Connelly, Tess Gerritsen, Julie Otsuka, Kathy Reichs, Chelsea Cain, Michael Koryta. Not sure yet.

Information:

http://literature.britishcouncil.org/john-banville

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5907/the-art-of-fiction-no-200-john-banville

http://benjaminblackbooks.com/aboutauthor.htm

Images:

http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/2c/c4/8fa5e1e06c490a7d936280.L._V192271132_SX200_.jpg

http://content7.flixster.com/photo/11/32/80/11328097_gal.jpg

http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1312055394l/199600.jpg

http://theroadshowversion.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/cotten_shadowofadoubt.jpg

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Linda's last day

Word of the day : desideratum : something desired as essential

Well, this is Linda's last day in Georgia. We've had a wonderful time with her and we'll miss her. I think she's liked what she saw of Statesboro, Beaufort, and Savannah. She bought us lots of stuff - too much! - got to spend time with Gabriel and Daisy, was able to relax, and shared (and cooked) some firs-rate meals with us. We hope she comes back again soon.

Julia is enjoying her first week of no summer classes. Gabriel is enjoying summer school. And Daisy is enjoying her new chain and leash.

I was so happy to hear (and shocked) that my parents bought a new home! It's a nice, cottage-like home in Amberley village in Cincinnati! Hooray! It is my mom's dream house and I'm so glad that her and my dad purchased it.

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On this date in 1892, Pearl S. Buck was born in Hillsboro, West Virginia. Buck's parents were Southern Presbyterian missionaries who were stationed in China. In 1892, on furlough, they came home to West Virginia and Pearl was born; the home is now a museum and Nationally Registered home. At three months of age, she went to China with her parents. Buck, whom readers today tend to (accurately) associate with China, spent the majority of the first forty years of her life there; she was taught by her mother and a Chinese tutor, and she could speak both English and Chinese from an early age.

In 1910, Buck returned to the states (her parents stayed in China) and attended school at Randolph-Macon Woman's College in Lynchburg, West Virginia. After graduating, she changed her plans to stay in the states and returned to China because of the grave illness of her mother. In 1917, she met a Cornell agronomist, John Lossing Buck, who was in China studying the country's rural economy. They married and remained unhappily so, living in China, for the next eighteen years; the couple had two children. For thirteen years, Pearl and John lived in Nanking.

In 1930, Buck's first novel was published - East Wind, West Wind. The publisher of the novel, Richard Walsh, would eventually become Buck's second husband. Her second novel, The Good Earth, would become one of the biggest, bestselling books of the century, winning the Pulitzer Prize. (Seven years later, Buck would win the Nobel Prize in Literature; she was the first American woman to do so.)

In the mid-1930s, Buck moved back to the states to be with Richard Walsh and her daughter, Carol, who was mentally retarded and institutionalized in New Jersey. Buck and Walsh's house, in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, is also now a Nationally Registered Historic Building. The couple adopted six more children.

From the University of Pennsylvania's Pearl S. Buck bio:

From the day of her move to the US, Pearl was active in American civil rights and women's rights activities. She published essays in both Crisis, the journal of the NAACP, and Opportunity, the magazine of the Urban League; she was a trustee of Howard University for twenty years, beginning in the early 1940s. In 1942, Pearl and Richard founded the East and West Association, dedicated to cultural exchange and understanding between Asia and the West. In 1949, outraged that existing adoption services considered Asian and mixed-race children unadoptable, Pearl established Welcome House, the first international, inter-racial adoption agency; in the nearly five decades of its work, Welcome House has assisted in the placement of over five thousand children. In 1964, to provide support for Amerasian children who were not eligible for adoption, Pearl also established the Pearl S. Buck Foundation, which provides sponsorship funding for thousands of children in half-a-dozen Asian countries.
Pearl Buck died in March, 1973, just two months before her eighty-first birthday. She is buried at Green Hills Farm.

I'm sure we've all heard of - or read - The Good Earth, but what other books did Buck write? I think it's a valid question because we associate this prolific author - who wrote about 80 novels, many of which have been long out of print and heard to track down - with just one novel. Here are three other books she wrote, besides The Good Earth and the other two books that make up The Good Earth trilogy: Sons (1933) and A House Divided (1935):

Pavilion of Women (1946) I've read this one. It's a solid, straightforward account, set in the rural Chinese countryside, of a middle-aged woman who, feeling that she has done her duties as a wife, urges her husband to take on a second wife. She herself is drawn to a foreign priest. Made into a movie in 2000 with Willem Dafoe.

Dragon Seed (1942) The story of Tzu Hsi, the story of China's last empress, set against the backdrop for Chinese democracy. Again, it's about the simple life (with roiling emotions) of a Chinese village family set around World War II.

Peony (1948) A young Chinese girl, Peony, is sold into a Jewish family as a bondmaid. She grows up and falls in love with the oldest son of the family. Tradition forbids them from marrying. How can she resolve it?

Buck, who was said to repeat her themes and storylines a bit, was a careful, deliberate writer, who wrote in a simple, exacting style. She was a fine writer and an important person and was instrumental in changing the ways Americans de-mythologized the Chinese people.

Happy birthday, Pearl!

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Movie Review

The Grey

You know that The Grey (2012), an unusually fine action film directed muscularly by Joe Carnahan, is going to achieve a brutal, barren, bare-bones authenticity early on: The characters, the eight surviving members of a plane crash, are standing around the Alaskan tundra, and the wind is howling so hard - and for so long - that you can barely make out what anyone is saying. (It's a bit annoying). Once the characters get moving, which they have to do because they're being hunted by a particularly vicious and territorial pack of wolves, the story picks up, which isn't to say that the opening plane crash doesn't pack a queasy, startling jolt of verisimilitude.

But when the oil workers, led by a physically imposing, haunted Liam Neeson, start their march - or, rather, trudge - to what they think might be safety and the wolves start closing in, the movie really ropes you. (The wolves, of course, are CGI.) The characters seem like they might be cliches at first - the hothead, the sick one, the quiet one, the leader, etc. - but the more dwindling time we get to spend with them, the sadder it is when they go.

The movie has some terrific scenes that pack a wallop, all the while achieving an elegant sense of loss and grief, even a spiritual restlessness. It has a blunt force and is constantly surprising, well-filmed (in British Columbia) and brutal. The ending has a nice buildup (a character looks at the wallets of his departed/eaten colleagues and sees these hard men with their wives and children) and an ambiguity that, like the film itself, stays with you. It's Alive meets Frozen meets Call of the Wild.

And Neeson, is of course, terrific. He continues to pop out one action feast after another - and outstanding ones too. He is streamlined and focused, toweringly rough-edged and brisk, providing us with a comforting sense that he is not one to be messed with.
(***1/2)

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Book Review

I've enjoyed the books I've read so far by Douglas Kennedy.

Until I read State of the Union (2007), a shrill, one-note tale that took me about a month to read - a great sign for a thriller.

The ludicrous story starts off in 1973, when Hannah Buchan, the daughter of a famed leftist professor, marries a dull, unexciting doctor and moves to small-town Maine. An on-the-run liberal radical, Tobias Judson, comes to town, and Hannah has an affair with him, after which he admits to her that he housed two Weathermen bombers, and is wanted by the FBI. He blackmails her into driving him to the Canadian border. Cue: massive guilt .

Thirty years later, in a politically divisive America dominated by unkind, non-perceptive loudmouths, Hannah's daughter goes missing. The drama is compounded when it is revealed that in Tobias' bestselling tell-all that Hannah helped Judson flee the country. Soap opera, soap opera. I'm not sure what it is Kennedy's trying to say about the relationship between sixties radicalism how that eventually got tided over (or congealed) into today's nonsensical political extremities and witch hunting. What is this dumb novel even about? To Kennedy, everyone on the right is an arrogant, stupid moron. You can write a novel in which the deck is stacked, okay, but the characters contrasting the brash, one-note types have to be somewhat interesting or likable, and herer they're not. The dialogue is horrendous - the characters don't sound like people; they don't show or reveal to us anything, they tell us things, they lecture, they philosophize (Kennedy's philosophizing in general is getting old.) Small-town life here is a cliche; in fact, everything feels washed-over and stale, old news. And the author should be flat-out embarrassed by a late scene in which he re-introduces a character, an autistic handiman, for a dramatic reveal and has him defending himself against Tobias (now fat and balding, of course) by claiming, "I ain't no retard. I'm just difference, that's all." Ick.

And here's a giveaway: The daughter isn't dead. There, I saved you time.

I need to read Kennedy's The Moment (2011) to get this one out of my mouth.
The pits.
(*)

*

You ready to see who's next up on my 500 Greatest Performances of All Time? Sure you are! It's...

Anjelica Huston
as Lilly Dillon in The Grifters (1990)

Adapted by crime novelist Donald Westlake and directed by the versatile Stephen Frears, Jim Thompson's novel played really well on screen and the cast crackled (John Cusack, Annette Bening), no one more so than Anjelica Huston playing a mother that could frighten grown men. Huston's cold, venial, monstrous Lilly, Cusack's mother, is the mom from hell - clipped, overpowering, uncompromising, viperish, and ready to collect. Huston can play about anything, and she gets an opportunity to do so here - simpering, nasty,victimized, playful, hard-edged, controlling, and, above all, deadly sexual. Huston, in her blond wig, truly possesses a stifling sexuality here, and she gets a great death, too.

(Note: The author profile usually done on Monday will be published in tomorrow's blogpost.)

Images:

http://www.craveonline.com/images/stories/2011/Film/The_Grey_Liam_Neeson%281%29.jpg

http://d28hgpri8am2if.cloudfront.net/book_images/cvr9781451602098_9781451602098.jpg

http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1287707364l/209279.jpg

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51S9PFc%2B1ZL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

http://ehsanknopf.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/vlcsnap-4501031.png

Information:

http://www.english.upenn.edu/Projects/Buck/biography.html

Sunday, June 24, 2012

Flat!

Word of the day : homiletic : of, relating to, or resembling a homily
; preachy; of or relating to the art of preaching

Julia, Linda, Gabriel, and I had a wonderful day yesterday in Beaufort and a good time at the outlet mall in Hilton Head. Unfortunately, we got a flat tire on the way home, but the tow company sent a nice man out pretty quickly and we only lost an hour of time.

Kristen Stewart, star of the Twilight films, made $34.5 million last year and now asks for $12.5 million per picture. Egads!

Jerry Sandusky? You got what you deserved. And your idiot of a wife who blindly stood beside you? What a joke. This is not loyalty, folks.

111 years ago today, in 1901, Pablo Picasso had his first public exhibition in Paris. He had already produced hundreds of paintings but was a relative unknown outside of Barcelona. The world, more specifically the art center that was Paris, was introduced to him by the 75 or so paintings that were part of the Paris exhibition. His show took place at the dealer Amborise Vollard's gallery and it ran about three weeks, Picasso's work displayed alongside the Basque painter's Francisco Iturrino's. Shortly after this, Picasso's "Blue" period began. The Blue Period lasted for a bout three years, 1901-1904. The monochromatic blue shades, greys and whites, the downcast, lowly, sadly underprivileged characters - all were trademarks of the period. Three masterpieces from this fertile, landmark period:

Child With a Dove

The Blue Nude

The Old Guitarist

*

(Brief) Movie Reviews:

Mr. Popper's Penguins (2011)

A British actress named Ophelia Lovibond (who I mistook for Melissa George) nearly hijacks this family film - based on the kids book by Richard and Florence Atwater - playing Jim Carrey's assistant Pippi, who speaks using little but words that start with 'p.' It's a gag that doesn't get old. The penguins are cute too - they're a combination of real Gentoo penguins and CGI - flittering and sliding around Carrey's apartment and the Guggenheim Museum. It's a fun, harmless, silly movie for kids about the necessity of family and sticking together, although adults will get as much of a kick out of the proceedings, with Carrey his usual game self, pulling off some elastic physical comedy, and Angela Lansbury, Clark Gregg, and Carla Gugino provide able support. It was directed by Mark Waters, who has made some enjoyable films that I've quite liked - Mean Girls, Freaky Friday, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past.

(***)

Late Bloomers (2012)

William Hurt, with a British accent that alarmingly seems to come and go at will, has a few fine moments but gives a mostly generic performance as a London architect whose wife, played by Isabella Rossellini, starts to panic when she has a a bout of memory loss. The thought of growing old - the couple is around sixty - is something she fumblingly tries to come terms with; he, on the other hand, isn't too concerned about aging before she starts constantly reminding him that he isn't as young as he used to be. She begins to change: exercising, age-proofing the house. When she realizes that he has no interest in facilitating her worries, a rift is formed, and the two separate. In Julie Gavras' film, not much of any significance happens; it's an easy enough film to watch, though it's a little dull. As a comedy it's not really that funny; as a drama, it's over-exaggerated. The characters aren't unlikable but they don't stay in one's memory very long. The film's flintiest, most engaging character is Rossellini's mom (played by South African actress Doreen Mantle), a tough, unsentimental old bird who cuts through the film's thin threads. The ending felt rushed, too.

(**)

*

Day 5 of my 500 Greatest Performances of All Time, and we're at...

John Cazale
as Fredo Corleone in The Godfather Part II

Robert DeNiro (who won), Michael V. Gazzo, and Lee Strasberg were all nominated for supporting Oscars in Coppola's great sequel, but not the late, great Cazale as the pitied, pitiful Sonny, whose weakness threatens to destroy the Corleone family. Cazale, nervous and liquid-eyed, his head a hanging monument of sorrow and under-estimation, is the recipient of the deadliest kiss in film's history. "I know it was you, Fredo," Al Pacino's Michael whispers to Fredo. Sonny sulks through the first two movies, tossed off and ignored, a weak-willed nothing. There's nothing weak about Cazale's beautiful performance, though, not at all. A wonderful New York stage actor who was in a relationship with Meryl Streep at the time of his unfortunate death from cancer in 1978 (at the age of forty-two), Cazale only made five films and yet has the best resume imaginable: the first two Godfathers, The Conversation, Dog Day Afternoon, and The Deer Hunter. Five films, five classics.

Images: http://www.leninimports.com/picasso_child_holding_dove_postcard_1.jpg

http://www.prlog.org/11215171-blue-nude-by-pablo-picasso.jpg

https://andreaneidle.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/picasso_old-man-with-guitar.jpg

http://www.dailycal.org/assets/uploads/2011/06/popperspenguins-620x398.jpg

http://www.indiewire.com/static/dims4/INDIEWIRE/c3a00b7/4102462740/thumbnail/353x248/http://d1oi7t5trwfj5d.cloudfront.net/a1/7fa9f07e7411e1bcc4123138165f92/file/late%20bloomers.jpg

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1RiAKjqjHdNhtSdyerxWdp7ZjBCAGAteWQDajSsGzBrqekjWiO_jF1xtPCmMMosidklkqVWuZZe081XriRQj-KHTskb9NSNWTTUDuP6TKO1caNMY65bil4DEVojaLUKsQvwV4387SjC6-/s1600/John+Cazale+The+Godfather+Part+II.PNG

Information: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/picasso-exhibited-in-paris

Friday, June 22, 2012

Champions

Word of the day : wetware : the human brain or a human being considered especially with respect to human logical and computational capabilities

Congrats to the Heat, who trounced the superb Thunder on Thursday night to win the NBA Finals in 5 games. Lebron James was simply sensational throughout the entire playoffs' it was one of the greatest individual playoff runs I've ever witnessed. Mike Miller, Shane Battier, Norris Cole, James Jones were all, at various times, superb in support; Battier was the secret MVP of the series. With Bosh and Wade at their best, Miami was just too much to handle.

I'm already predicting that we will see this exact same matchup of teams in next year's finals.

*

It's Day 4 on our trip through my 500 Greatest Performances of All Time. My next slot is reserved for...

Barbara Stanwyck
as Phyllis Dietrichson in Double Indemnity (1944)

As James Cain's ultimate femme fatale, Stanwyck's blood runs colder than an arctic tundra in Billy Wilder's masterpiece. Fred MacMurray's insurance agent thinks he's too smart for her but his downfall, of course, is underestimating just how duplicitous and conniving she really is. When MacMurray first encounters her, she matches him wit for wit and it's understood why he falls for her; Stanwyck's breathy aura seems to infect the air around her. She convinces him and us that she has fallen for him, but because it's noir we know that she'll ultimately be his downfall. Stanwyck makes Phyllis a character of many dimensions and she keep us off-guard and fascinated. But what rottenness!

*

The great Billy Wilder, director of Double Indemnity, was born today in 1906; he died in 2002. Wilder was an auteur as a director, helming some of the finest studio films ever made. He was also a great screenwriter too. He was born in Poland and had one of his first jobs for a Viennese newspaper. He wanted to be a lawyer but it was a good thing for us filmgoers that his Jewishness forced him to leave Nazi Germany (where he was working as a screenwriter for German movies) for the U.S, where he went to work for the studios in the late 1930s. He frequently wrote or co-wrote the films he directed, movies that were marked by sparkling dialogue, well-rounded characters, sharp comic timing, indelible images. He directed mostly comedies, but he made some great dramas too, from Double Indemnity (maybe the greatest noir ever made) to Sunset Boulevard (1950), the greatest movie ever made about Hollywood, told from the point-of-view of William Holden's dead writer.
The Lost Weekend, about an alcoholic (Ray Milland), won Wilder two Oscars in 1945 - for directing and writing. Though the film seems overdone, overwrought and obvious today, it was an important film of its time (Milland won an Oscar too).

As a comedy director, Wilder's films were marked by fresh conceits, silliness, characters in over their heads, bickering, biting, fast-paced back-and-forth: the original version of Sabrina (1954) showed the crusty romantic side of Humphrey Bogart; 1955's The Seven-Year Itch had the iconic image of Marilyn Monroe's skirt blowing upwards; Some Like it Hot (1959) is by, most accounts, one of the Top-5 comedies ever made; 1966's The Fortune Cookie introduced to us what would be a decades-long glorious chemistry between Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. (I want to add that Wilder's film version of Agatha Christie's Witness For the Prosecution - 1957 - was the finest version of Christie ever put on film.) He won three more Oscars for writing-directing-producing The Apartment, another comedy that is constantly near the top of the Great-Comedies-of-All-Time list; he made 7 films with Jack Lemmon.

He won 6 Oscars all together (a screenplay Oscar for Sunset Boulevard); he was nominated 21 times (as a writer, producer, or director), twice in one year (1941) for his screenplays for two different films.

An incredible career.

*

Finally, let's wrap up the week with a brief nod to the next photographer on Professional Photographer's list of the "100 Most Influential Photographers." His name is Eric Boman (#52) and he lives in New York and works for Vogue. He is best well-known for the album covers he photographed for the band Roxy Music. He also did a striking series of photographs of Manolo Blahnik shoes (Blahnik is a friend of Boman's), in which the shoes appear in striking scenes and settings.

Roxy Music's 1974 album Country Life

Bianca Jagger

Images:

http://daninoir.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/Phyllis_DoubleIndemnity.jpg

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0811851168.01.IN01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l136b6DOZ91qz84edo1_500.jpg

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz9SVhgc0-vQ0TVXXd4nDDVfm3cqCax_f7VUygjRXwg1YQLxbpit54BEMdmNRhP__RRTJeMkC-PSa3NzQIWpBtvwaJ2IKpyVOehp651Vi4RYobb7kP-nC763bJMQDnT4LhKS96qPCm3rw/s400/45809822.jpg

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisheHg6BcEhq1xulTDlOISSreZkH7VQnZIeiFY2uDNJ03wv3Qj9Fh6jvzVqqw0Vyj7P-IqNZ5BCCjg2quPPqQRJb-94TorrJLD7aUg6IHSM5HaT8m4_9hlnj0OLjysEqWRMtLNICMzBwE/s1600/slih.jpg

Thursday, June 21, 2012

Thursday

Word of the day : amative : indicative of love
; of or relating to love

It's going to be another hot and humid day here in SE Georgia. Plans for today consist of taking Gabriel to school, going out for coffee and breakfast (the former not for me) showing Julia's mother around Statesboro and the university, going out for lunch, and then trying to stay out of this swampy heat.

Linda made in softly yesterday and is ready to soak in as much "Georgia flavor" as she can in her week here.

Tonight, I'll DVR the Heat-Thunder game because the ladies will probably want to watch a movie or something. But I'll go out on a limb and press my luck and try to guess correctly again. The Heat will win the series tonight in Miami and Lebron will get his ring.

Miami 98, Oklahoma City 90.

*

It's Thursday, and that means it's time to look at the new movies opening this weekend:

To Rome with Love The ever-prolific Woody Allen makes another stop on his European City tour with this subpar-reviewed outing. After last year's wondrous, appealing Midnight in Paris, this one is bound to be somewhat of a let down. It's okay, though; I see all his films regardless of what critics say. The story is the same as it always is - neurotic, doubting characters searching for, scraping at, questioning love. There are always good, if by now moldy, one-liners, references to philosophers and classical musicians and therapists... you know the drill. Allen himself is on-screen (for the first time since 2006's washed-out Scoop), playing an opera aficionado married to that great bitter harridan Judy Davis. For the younger generation, there's a group of actors born to be in an Allen film - Jesse Eisenberg, Greta Gerwig, Ellen Page - and Penelope Cruz (who won an Oscar for Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona in 2008), Roberto Benigni (where has he been?), and Alec Baldwin are here too. Bound to be enchantingly photographed.
Verdict: Very Interested

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World    I'm not sure about this one. A lightly romantic, soft comedy that just happens to be about the apocalypse. Steve Carell and Keira Knightley (I always saw them as a romantic pairing, didn't you?) play two people - he an insurance agent, she his free-spirited neighbor - who have to deal with the fact that an asteroid will collide with the earth in a few weeks' time. Well, what you do? The two take a road trip, encountering all sorts of people who are trying to wrap their heads around the fact that life as they know it will end not with a whimper but a bang. Decent reviews, with a good supporting cast - Friday Night Lights' Connie Britton, William Petersen, Martin Sheen, Derek Luke, Patton Oswalt. Could be a low-key pleasure. Written and directed by Lorene Scafaria.
Verdict: Mildly Interested

Brave    The latest Pixar adventure is about a spunky Scottish princess (voiced by Kelly Macdonald) who gets magically turned into a bear. It's getting good-not-great reviews; this isn't one of Pixar's masterpieces, but still a worthy summer entertainment for kids. Emma Thompson, Julie Walters, Robbie Coltrane, and Billy Connolly are among the vocal stars.
Verdict: Not Interested

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter    As junky as it sounds. Critics are calling it cartoonish, plodding, unsatisfying. Out tall 16th president, as it goes, was actually a nocturnal hunter of the undead. Based on Seth Grahame Smith's mysteriously popular novel (he also wrote the screenplay), the film contends that Honest Abe was called into duty when, as a boy, he witnessed his mother murdered by a vampire! Stars the unknown-to-me Benjamin Walker as Lincoln, Dominic Cooper, Anthony Mackie, and Rufus Sewell.
Verdict: Not Interested

*

All right, day 3 in the 500 Greatest Performances of All Time. Up next?

Claude Rains
as Alexander Sebastian in Notorious (1946)

As the sly, intelligent, simpering Nazi whose wife (Ingrid Bergman), unbeknownst to him, infiltrates his group, Rains is a dandy in one of Alfred Hitchcock's greatest films. The slow-burning chemistry between Bergman and Cary Grant is as great as expected, but it's Rains who steals the film right out from under them. Rains' Sebastian is cold on the surface but Rains makes him likable and engaging without diminishing the secret, cultivated nastiness he and his cronies are up to behind closed doors. When he realizes he has been betrayed by Bergman, Rains' heartbreak is subtly conveyed and when he realizes that it is now he who must answer to the higher-ups for letting a traitor into their midst, Rains beautifully crumbles from within, revealing the fact that he is a momma's boy who was in over his head from the beginning.

*

Book Review

Anne Tyler has written her share of wonderful novels, but her new novel The Beginner's Goodbye (2012) isn't one of them. Alarmingly short (less than 200 pages), it's just okay, which isn't to say it's not worth reading, but as an introduction to a great writer, it's bound to be a disappointment.

A handicapped Baltimore man, Aaron Woolcott (one of Tyler's fubsy, clumsy, understated, somewhat unfulfilled men), loses his wife when a tree falls onto their house and kills her. His period of grief is made murkier when he begins to see his wife in the flesh around town - at the farmers' market, outside the house. Although Tyler downplays these encounters, implying that the prosaic quality to these ghostly visits are life-like and bespeak of the ambiguity of the afterlife (nothing is lost, nothing goes anywhere), they're not particularly engaging. I understand that Tyler wants to show us that if we were visited by dead loved ones, it wouldn't be movie-like encounters, but she underplays it to the point where it's numbingly boring.

And that's the problem. This just isn't a very engaging book. The plot involves Aaron moving back in with his controlling sister, plowing through the days at his family's publishing company, and hiring a crew to fix up his demolished house. It's all kind of blah. Tyler is as good as any writer alive at showing human foibles, the everyday human behavior that can frustrate, infuriate, and draw us closer to those around us; she is a master at details. And there is some good writing here, but Tyler, uncharacteristically tin-eared, seems to have lost her gift for dialogue. Does Tyler no longer grasp how people talk? Has she - or you - have ever heard a 40ish man say "Goodness" or "Oh, my goodness"? I haven't. And I'd be willing to be she actually hasn't either.

I get the feeling that Tyler has scrunched the entire universe down into her cozy, cutesy Baltimorean snow globe. And that's become a problem. Nothing feels vital, none of the characters are particularly memorable, and while there are beautiful descriptions and sentence work, not much feels fresh or recognizable. Tyler is so good at making the small things in life feel big. Here, her work just feels small; you just brush it off, like a gnat.
(**1/2)

*

A few months back, we started making our way through Professional Photographer's list of the "100 Most Influential Photographers." We're on #51 now.

Cecil Beaton (#51)

The British Beaton (1904-1980) was influenced as a child by the postcards of societal ladies that accompanied the Sunday newspaper. In the 1920s, he was a staff photographer for Vanity Fair and Vogue, known for taking his models/sitters and placing them in front of strange, odd backgrounds. He flattered his subjects, playing up to them, arranging them in settings inspired by modern art - mirrors, cellophane, torn paper. He was societally savvy, knowing how to mingle and mix with socialites and celebrities. He also dabbled in fashion design, was a writer and a diarist, and was an in-demand romantic photographer, making his women look really great. He became famous for photographing the First Family of the 1930s - stammering King George VI, his brother Edward, the Queen, Wallis Simpson. He wasn't particularly beloved - he was somewhat of a persnickety, self-important snob who created an image of himself much the same way Cary Grant did. He was also a painter and stage and film set designer, winning four Tonys and winning an Oscar for My Fair Lady (1964). Beaton was knighted in 1972. He influenced countless other photographers.

Marilyn

The Wyndham sisters, 1950, based on/inspired by John Singer Sargent's 1899 painting

collection of images from 1942's Royal Family shoot, which feature King George VI, Queen Elizabeth, Princesses Margaret and Elizabeth

*

There will be no more Soul Tracks. I enjoyed posting this daily feature, but I thought Wednesday's post, featuring James Carr, was a good one to go out on. I'm open to suggestions about similar musical daily features.

One final thing I want to add. For those of you who read a lot (or, at least, consistently), I encourage you to join the free site Shelfari. Julia and I are on it. You simply post (and rate) the books you've read, are reading, and want to read. It's fun!

Images:

http://www.movieactors.com/freezeframes-12/Notorious12.jpeg

http://www.atomicbooks.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/b/e/beginnersgoodbye.jpg

http://cdnimg.visualizeus.com/thumbs/da/13/marilyn,b,w,marilyn,monroe,black,and,white,cecil,beaton,photography-da137e559c4fe0a86904ce3bad5ad0e6_h.jpg

http://www.jssgallery.org/Other_Artists/Beaton_Cecil/The_Wyndham_Sisters.jpg

https://iseepixelsnotpoundsigns.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/2010eh8182_cecil_beaton_contact_sheet_1.jpg?w=600&h=586

http://www.hotterinhollywood.com/.a/6a00e009804e138833016306b59451970d-500wi

http://www.indiewire.com/static/dims4/INDIEWIRE/de1aff8/4102462740/thumbnail/680x478/http://d1oi7t5trwfj5d.cloudfront.net/85/72be20ba1311e19f68123138165f92/file/Seeking%20A%20Friend-for-the-end-of-the-world-knightley-steve-carell.jpg

Information:

http://theselvedgeyard.wordpress.com/2009/04/18/cecil-beaton-the-randy-dandy-of-photography-fashion/

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Spread the word, spread the word, spread the word!

Readers of this blog, tell anyone you know who might be interested in reading it (every now and then) about it!

I'm trying to get to 2000 page views by the end of the year.

So, please, please, please, spread the word.

Thanks!

I'll be back Thursday.

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Lee Krasner

On this Linda Eve, it will be an afternoon of cleaning. Julia and I stopped for donuts after dropping Gabriel off at school, checked out some books at the library, and then went our separate ways. I will take Gabriel to the pool after I pick him up from school.

Prediction for tonight: the Heat again, by five points.

So did we kick off the 500 Greatest Performances of All Time yesterday or what? All right, let's keep on.

Paul Scofield
as Judge Thomas Danforth in The Crucible (1996)

This was an emotional, high-pitched, punch-to-the-gut adaptation of Arthur Miller's classic (with a screenplay by Miller himself) with a dream cast (Daniel Day-Lewis, Joan Allen, Winona Ryder, Bruce Davison); lord among them was Scofield as the stern, unforgiving judge who has come to investigate what all the hysterical Salem girls are up to. Scofield, with his long face of death and rich, sonorous voice, is unforgettable, looking like he steeped out of a Bosch or Hogarth painting. "Now we shall touch the bottom of this swammmmmmppppp!" he cries out, in one of the best line readings I've ever heard.

*

Twenty-eight years ago today, Lee Krasner died. We know her best as the beleaguered wife of Jackson Pollock, but she was an extraordinary Abstract Expressionist in her own right - and, some might say, a more palatable, visually interesting artist.

Krasner (1908-1984) studied at various art schools in New York and during the Depression worked menial jobs while she attended classes at night. Her work started out in realist mode but after attending the Hans Hoffman School of Fine Arts, she began to play with Fauvism, Cubism, and abstraction.

During the mid-1930s, she was employed in the mural division at the Works Progress Administration. When she met Jackson Pollock in the early 1940s, she was so drawn to him, so immersed in his own talent and work, that her own work suffered and was placed on the back burner for a period. The two moved to rural New York in the mid-1940s and their work blossomed. In the early 1950s, their marriage crumbling, Krasner began excelling in Matisse-like collages.

After Pollock died, Krasner began working in his barn - large autobiographical works generated by whole body movement dominate this period. Fauvism, collage, abstraction - she returned to these styles again and again throughout the last decades of her life.

Krasner grew up in a traditional Jewish family and was the most educated of the New York artists she associated with and befriended. She will probably always be best known as Pollock's wife, business manager and sparring partner, but her own work demonstrated quite a range. Her work is often autobiographical; she saw no difference between art and life - her work was her life.

The above work, 1965's Night Creatures (in the collection at the MET in NYC), is one of the post-Pollock works she did in a long period of grief and mourning, raw outpourings of loss and and insomniac grief. A work of acryllic on paper, it's a piece in which rhythmic whirls of black and white seem to wrap around disembodied eyes. Suggestive and disturbing, it's a menacing work that is hard to ignore, to shrug off. Are there figures within the dense foliage of dizzying swirls? Who knows?

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We've reached the halfway on out 100 Most Influential Photographers of All Time (according to Professional Photographer magazine)!

Corrine Day (#50)

Day was a British photographer whose life was cut short when she was diagnosed with a brain tumor at the age of thirty-one in 1996. She was expected to live no longer than eight years, but lived for another fourteen, dying in 2010. Day, who formed close attachments with many of the people she shot, brought a hard-edged, sometimes messy documentary feel to fashion photography - what we can look back on now and call "grunge." She became well-known for a shoot she did of Kate Moss in 1993 for British Vogue in Moss' own flat; the images have a strewn, lived-in, almost uncomfortable feel to them. For seven years, Day, while working for many fashion magazines, constructed her book Diary; the book, which was published in 2000, was a bleak but hopeful, accurate, dark-hued, extremely personal account (through photographs) of her life and friends.

Kate Moss, 1993

from Diary

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A Soul Track for Tuesday?

"Dark End of the Street," by James Carr. Carr (1942-2001) was the greatest soul singer the average music fan has never heard of. Born in Mississippi (in a town near the birthplace of John Lee Hooker and Sam Cooke), Carr was the son of a preacher who moved the family to Memphis, where Carr started singing in gospel groups. He joined the Goldwax label (formed in the success of Stax Records) and really only was of musical relevance in the late 1960s, when he released thirteen singles and two albums. By most accounts, he wasn't mentally stable and was prone to deep depression. He faded out and tried to mount a minor comeback in the 1990s, which unfortunately wasn't to be. He died of lung cancer in Memphis in 2001.

His version of "The Dark End of the Street"is, by any account, one of the highlights of soul or pop music. For Carr, the Dan Penn-Chips Moman composition would be his biggest hit, reaching all the way to #10 in the Black Singles Chart (#77 pop), but its longevity isn't just the result of his stirring version of it, but the various other covers of the song: the Flying Burrito Brothers, Percy Sledge, Springsteen, Elvis Costello, Dolly and Porter, Linda Ronstadt, Cat Power, to name but a few. It was off Carr's great 1966 album You Got My Mind Messed Up.

A masterpiece.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzcdNwIkmYA

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5 Things for this week...

5 Regional Places to Take Linda when she's in town