ROBERT ALTMAN DANCES HIS WAY OUT

after the great body of work....especially in the '70's...... Altman was asked to do a film Modern Dance.......I didn't care too much for the film....but as a documentarian of Dance, he left an important film.....and the performance of the nimbly talented Neve Campbell......

AUTOMATED FAIR PLAY DEVICE

I haven't seen the new "TDTESS" film, but i was just thinking about Gort.... Gort administers devastation to those who would disrupt the Peace within a collection of planets that may interact with one another........Earth is not a favorite of Klaathu's, exactly, is it? It does seem that the only device that seems to stop Mankind's violent and aggressive habits is the fear of and actualization of radical punishment.....not just the threat, but the threatener's willingness to kick ass...

It's been over half a century since the great film opened.....I'm certain that the new version will have much more violence and many more threats of Earth's extinction.....there's a jillion more landmines, guns, bombs, poison gas cannisters....well, more of everthing thing that can possibly wreak havoc.....humans are just very reactive and prone to violence, aggression and retribution......We need a real Klaathu to visit and read us the handwriting on the wall!

the bag puppet me

i was rating films on Fandango.....one gets to make a "bag puppet" persona....this is mine......how silly!

PIAF

whose voice lingers?

THE RED SHOES........DANCE AS ART

I think this was my first exposure to ballet in the cinema.......and a far cry from my dance experience with Hazel Jones School of Dance after school in Jr. High School.......

WINDSOR MCKAY

always my favorite cartoonist! there exists a full length Japanese animated film of "Adventures in Slumberland"........I wonder if Windsor ate bread with ergot.........but that is stuff for a blog in another place.......

MARILYN @82!

 

would Marilyn be timeless, alive? ageing worked for Hepburn and Grant, Leachman and Connery......but Marilyn? We'll never know, will we? It's not like she was Ruth Gordon, is it!

CRONENBERG

Of the modern filmakers, David Cronenberg seems to make familiar those links to the hidden Mind...finding lost memories in drawers and closets, hiding evidential things under rugs and within mysterious symbols......more psychological than....say.....Clive Barker, who delves more into the nature of fear of supernatural Evil than into the psychological nature of confusion and madness....

Of course, I'm serious!

 

First there was Errol, then Dirk.......

who set the stage first for off-kilted romantic examples for those such as I.....I don't remember the film, but I do remember a scene that I viewed as an adolescent, in which Dirk, in arty clothing that was hardly fashionable for a romantic lead, casts a lingering eye about the dreary landscape outside the window of the controlled and contained world in which he exists, with only a glimmer of dreams in his eyes. Then, he turns away, a veil, compelled by his victorian indoctrinations, falling across his vision....then, after a fraction of a second, he turns, sharply, again looking out the same window.....the scene comes into sharp focus....he lifts a brow of acknowledgment...looks inward......(cut to the door)...a voice....."Are you all right, in there?"

Luncheon on the Sofa or behind the hanging shirts......just get on with it!

after an adolescence spent in the late 50's, wherein only subtle, sometimes imperceptible, references were seldom made to the emerging sexualities of kids, like myself, who were seeking alliances outside the mainstream of suppression which reigned from the end of WWII until the liberating influence of the French, who were still largely homophobic, and the English, who unwittingly released their hold on the "one foot on the floor" sexuality with "Women in Love" and even a Dirk Bogarde film, "Victim", a claustrophobic and paranoid take on the phobia, 20 years before that. ......The scene, from "Eating Out", still conveys the current mindset of repression......Another 20 years....over a century after the trials of Oscar Wilde....and the veil will perhaps have been lifted.....at least in the big cities that hover above the morass of guilt and desperation, upon intellectual freedom and sexual nonchalance......

SALLY POTTER

After "Singing in the Rain"........there's "The Tango Lesson"....with the wonderful, most splendid, Sally Potter and the really hot Pablo Veron....

BILLY ELLIOT AND THE ULTIMATE MIKEL

at 6, i began dance classes with Hazel Robinson.......not many boys my age had the interest or the coordination for dance.....nevertheless, shamelessly, i undertook the
way of Gene Kelly, practicing in the gym and auditorium of West Clinton Elementary School, assiduously avoiding the playground of neanderthal children who would tease me for this sissy stuff, during their breaks from arguing, wrestling and boxing with one another.......i continued dance class through high school, and took some classes as an adult in modern and classical. I had no discipline for the pain and torture of dance, however.....and, in my twenties, danced alone and with friends to Balinese temple music and free-form expressive dance......when BILLY ELLIOT came out, old emotions came to the surface.......yea.....Billy.....go for it! Dance your heart out! Then there's the grown-up version......with technique.....Mikhail Baryshnikov!

80's MUSIC VIDEOS

HOME OF THE BRAVE AND STOP MAKING SENSE are the two that, after many viewings, still excite the genes of Art....

farewell to the great Paul.....

CAMELEON CATE

I think she may be this century's greatest dramatic talent......I forget that it's she who is inhabiting the roles she plays, such is her transcendental gift........

ONLINE MOVIES AND TELEVISION

A SENSE OF SCALE and ONLINE FREEFILM


i am pleased that, eventually, every movie, book and music file will be available for instant viewing, reading and listening........ This is from HULA, which makes available a small library with surprisingly good video quality and excellent sound.......now, if only TCM would extend its library to online access!

EMILE

This will be the decade of the teary-eyed men......emotional, sensitive types....the postponed legacy of James Dean......say goodbye to the hard-edged men of the 40's and 50's......maybe we should abandon "best actor" and "best actress" awards and go for "best individual actor"......the line between the sexes is vanishing.....perhaps, someday, we will be a unisex race that reproduces in labs according to dna blueprints stored in computers......will Emile change the face of Valentino like Rudolf changed the face of acting, years ago?

THERE'S FRED ASTAIRE AND THERE'S..........

ELEANOR POWELL! my mother always thought Ms. Powell was the greatest of Fred's partners......very subjective stuff....but this performance would lead me to believe that her assessment was right on!

Eleanor Powell EXCLUSIVE Behind the Scenes UNIQUE RECORDING
Uploaded by tapdance

a rare clip that shows the tricks behind the magic.........

LITTLE JOE

I met Joe in N.Y. when we were teenagers.....i had never seen anyone.....even Robert Taylor....in "Camille" of course........who was so drop dead georgeous.......he hung with the street people, junkies and drag queens.....
all, completely unfamiliar to me at that time.......he became an underground movie star, sorta......and acted opposite such diverse "stars" as Holly Woodlawn, Jane Forth and Sylvia Miles.......Udo Kier, the definitive "decadant" actor, Johnny Depp and Taylor Meade......

Barrault and Arletty........ahhh......

My heart lies between them.....

JUNGUA AT THE FOX

Last evening i saw the Shaolin Disciples and the Imperial Acrobats of China in this astounding and dramatic production.......share the spotlights, Cirque!

Alejandro Jodorowsky explains the Tarot

WILD IS THE FACE IN THE WIND

GRACE JONES

Grace's take on Wozzeck or Pandora's Box.........what a performance artist.......
I don't think many have given much thought to what this song is really about....

HOT VOODOO

this remains one of my favorite musical numbers......with the great Marlene.....

EARLIEST ESCAPIST FANTASIES

musicals on afternoon t.v. absolutely none of my friends liked these....but i was obsessed with watching them......beautiful, optimistic and relatively non-violent.....lots of dancing, singing, kissing and hugging.....i thought this was what Life was supposed to be about, after all. Isn't it?

BOCCACIO 70

 


I ONLY SAW TWO FILMS WITH JUST MY STEP-FATHER, TOM, IN TOW.....ONE WAS 'CLEOPATRA' AND THE OTHER WAS 'BOCCACIO 70'.....
THE REASON......HE THOUGHT IT WOULD BE IN VERY POOR TASTE TO TAKE MY MOTHER TO SUCH RUBBISH, BUT HE SECRETLY WANTED
TO ADMIRE ANITA, SOPHIA, AND ELIZABETH'S PROJECTILE BOSOMS.......THEN 17, I WOULD HAVE PREFERRED ROMY SCHNEIDER TO THOSE RUBENESQUE TYPES.......

HAIRDOS

 

all the characters in the old movies (1920's-early 1960's) had such coiffed hair....in the 20's and 30's,
at least half of the actresses in Hollywood were platinum blondes with marcelled hair, permanented hair....some kind of "processed hair", anyway.......which was then lacquered and lit.......beautiful helmets over faces with perfect skin, huge, long-lashed eyes and unusually thin, arching brows.........I would watch the old movies, as a kid, and wonder why
no one in my town looked like that.......maybe the local women just didn't have all that paraphernalia.....all the women in my family went to Rose's Beauty Shoppe and were made up to look like Susan Hayward Talullah Bankhead (who, with the relatively unknown Harry Townes, were from my neck of the woods)
or Ava Gardner......the then current Southern fashion icons......

SAL

from REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE to FORTUNE AND MEN'S EYES.....
I always related to Sal Mineo......sensitive, vigilent
and wide-eyed.......and HE got to be best buddies
with Jimmy Stark.....whew! Sal just didn't quite fit into
any of the available niches of the 50's and early 60's....
his time would come too late.....now it is fashionable to be
sensitive and teary-eyed......

LIBERACE

 

My step-father had collaborated with Smith, Northington and Kranert [LeRoy Kranert was not only an architect, but an accomplished pianist and cellist/bassist and his wife, Veda was my piano instructor for many years] to built a "new" country club in Huntsville......the "Parkway".......for the grand opening, the campy and popular pianist, Liberace, performed like a Folies Showgirl at a piano.......the candleopera was so over the top and was wired, through the piano leg, to flash into action as Mr. FlashyAction himself bolted, sorta, onto the round stage........I don't remember whether the small town society folk were thrilled or not....they probably were! lots of arpeggios....! actually, Liberace could actually play in a more conservative manner. (the sound file is not his performance, however)
After this 'success' my step-father met Louis Leoni and was off to re-do the Sand's Hotel Kitchens.......I went to visit him there......and saw the Folies Bergere....Liberace was playing there, too, but i preferred Victor Borge......so we went to see him, after I was tossed from the Folies for being "under age" for tittie viewing.....

CRY ME A RIVER

it seems so odd, even now, to me that i played a 45 of Julie London singing "Cry me a River"......over and over....... i still have the album.......her stagy presence in "A girl can't help it" was really hot......for a teenager, anyway......another piece of fluff.......i was in Mexico, with my parents....who were there to hear/see Jayne Mansfield....playing the violin, i think......that does seem strange....but....that's what they told me, anyway........so i wandered the streets, buying painted clay pottery, an "aztec" mask and a monstrous carved chess set........so, i missed the "violin concert". Julie was performing in Vegas.....but we had to go to a Judy Garland concert that hurt my ears! " 'Clang, clang, clang' went the trolley". In retrospect, I should have been much more excited to hear "Julie"......