“He Who Dances on Wood” is a luminous homage to making do with what’s at hand, to the vocation of art, and most particularly to the glorious Fred Nelson.
FILM
FILM NOIR L.A.
Consider, for example, the closing lines of “Desert Fury” (1947), a deliriously over-the-top love pentangle directed by Lewis Allen and shot primarily in Arizona: one of the few noirs filmed in (lurid) color.
AN INSPECTOR CALLS
Arthur Birling crows: “Makes all the difference in the world whether we said it in private or it becomes a public scandal.”
“The girl’s dead and we all helped to kill her,” Eric rejoins bitterly. “That’s all that matters.”
THAT FEEL WHEN NO GIRLFRIEND
For all their solipsism, these young men are not self-pitying so much as they’re bewildered: by the state of the world, the culture, and the fact that as young males they’re unseen, unwanted, unremarked upon.
NATIONAL BIRD: THE TRAUMA OF DRONE WARFARE
Seconds after the strike, the shooters realize “something is weird”: they weren’t able to PID (positively identify) a single weapon among those they’d just blown to smithereens.
- ANGELUS NEWS
- ...
LA’S ACADEMY MUSEUM OF MOTION PICTURES
At last, LA is poised to have the museum it has long deserved: the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, opening Sept. 30. I love that they’ve named it the Museum of Motion Pictures: not the Museum of Film, which would have skewed hoity-toity and auteurish; not the Museum of Movies, which would have gone too […]
POULENC’S OPERA: “DIALOGUE OF THE CARMELITES”
The opera was worth every minute of the 3 hours. The acting was superb; French maestro Manuel Rosenthal conducted. But it wasn’t the music that stayed with me. It was the Reverend Mother’s death—so excruciating as almost to be unworthy of her; so NOT a traditional martyrdom.
PASOLINI AND ME PODCAST!
More podcast fun. This one is from Catholic Culture, with Thomas Mirus and James T. Majewski, good Catholic boys from NYC. Here’s the YouTube blurb: “In 1962, inspired by Pope St. John XXIII’s outreach to non-Christian artists, a gay communist picked up the Gospels and ended up making a film about Jesus. Nervous yet? But […]
NIGHT AND FOG: ALAIN RESNAIS’ HOLOCAUST MASTERPIECE
Mountains of eyeglasses, combs, shaving brushes, human hair: “Here are the stockpiles of the Nazis at war.”
The ceilings of gas chambers, raked by desperate fingernails. The surgical ward where human experiments were performed: amputations, castrations, burnings with phosphorus
NOMAD: BRUCE CHATWIN AND WERNER HERZOG
Perhaps it was inevitable that these two self-mythologizing figures would meet. Their paths intersected, not always at the same time, at many points throughout their respective travels.
MOVIES AND MORE MOVIES
WOMEN’S PRISON MOVIES: Caged (1950) Eleanor Parker, Agnes Moorehead. “She’ll be back.” Don’t miss the scene where butch sadistic prison matron steps out for her Saturday night date, lording it over and leaving the love-starved inmates to twist and turn. Turn the Key Softly (1953), dir. Jack Lee; British drama starring Yvonne Mitchell, Joan Collins (surprise) as a prostitute, Kathleen Harrison and Terence Morgan. Three women from different backgrounds are released from prison over the course of 24 hours each face a struggle to avoid returning to her criminal ways.
- ANGELUS NEWS
- ...
MOVIES GALORE: QUARANTINE TIMES FUN
I have finally been given the chance to say in print that “The Seventh Seal” is a giant bore. Give me Joan Crawford, Richard Widmark, and Constance Towers!
VANITY FAIR: HOLLYWOOD CALLING
Remember the carefree days when we could leave our homes, gather in public places maskless, and take in a museum exhibit of a Sunday afternoon? I did that, way back on February 23. It was right after the Annenberg Space for Photography mounted a presentation, now “up” through July 26, called “VANITY FAIR: HOLLYWOOD CALLING: […]
WERNER HERZOG’S “ECSTATIC TRUTH”
“Our grandchildren will blame us for not having tossed hand grenades into TV stations because of commercials. Television kills our imagination.”