INCHING ALONG

I guess I'm trying to reconcile abstraction and realism. I do what I feel like doing and look at the results. If I don't like it, I change it until something happens that I like.

Mother and Daughter

This is the drawing outline of a new work. It will look MUCH neater when done. But I like, preliminarily, to mess up the paper so as to have something to work with and against.

VIVA MARIA! 1965

The parts of the movie that work, do so brilliantly, like nuggets stuck in dough. Two French women named Marie (Brigitte Bardot and Jeanne Moreau) meet up in South America and become revolutionaries while also working in a traveling circus. The magician’s bird can appear and disappear in wondrous ways, and later delivers bombs, flying in through one window, out the next, followed by the boom! But, for me, Bardot stole the show. Daughter of an Irish revolutionary, she starts out life as his accomplice, and is most accomplished with all manner of weaponry, such as blowing up bridges. Later, in South America, she is also completely sexually unabashed, and chalks up the names of lovers till she runs out of wall space. George Hamilton is a revolutionary peasant leader, who wins Moreau. Changing their names to Maria, the two women create a popular circus act that incorporates the striptease they invent. Although Moreau won a foreign actress award for the film over Bardot, this was for me Bardot’s film. She runs around in men’s clothes and a cap like a little elf. She walks off as if transfixed into a carriage with three waiting men, and returns the next morning with her gown all tore up, with bruises on her arm, declaring to the effect that no experience was ever more glorious. There is virtually no nudity despite the striptease theme, but there is the proposition that women can be extremely sexy and “feminine” while being superior in warfare, and can lead a revolution to boot. I’d recommend it for that and for Bardot’s performance. Louis Malle directs.

CABIN IN THE SKY, 1943

Cabin in the Sky is a musical film that had its genesis as a Broadway play starring some of the same actors—Ethel Waters as Petunia, for example. The play was choreographed by George Balanchine, which helps to explain the high class of the movie directed by Vincent Minnelli in his directorial debut. Up to this time, there had been no other mainstream Hollywood movie featuring black characters. Minnelli broke new ground. Black life is accorded its recognition as autonomous and independent of mere servitude to whites. There are no white actors. Not totally unlike black communities of today, people, though relatively poor, are in touch with wealth and glamour, since they are not geographically segregated by income level. The main characters—Petunia and husband Little Joe—live in a simple cottage, but they might be seen dressed to the gill at the local nightclub, and there the drapery and valances are immensely elaborate, and gamblers (like “Shine”) earn great sums of money, and are almost worshipped. Black people know how to party, and like to look good. Lena Horne as Georgia Brown, a temptress out to snag Little Joe (Eddie “Rochester” Anderson), never looked lovelier, with her white floral midriff tied under her breasts, her black slinky skirt, and a white flower in her hair. There were two musical performances that I, idiosyncratically, take away from among the jam packed great musical numbers. One is where Horne is lying beguilingly in a hammock singing a duet—“Life is Full of Consequences”—with Little Joe. Her voice is as silky and kittenish as his is gravelly and like a drill sergeant’s—a perfect contrast. The other piece that had me swooning was Duke Ellington’s “Going Up,” performed by his band, where people dance in a Busby Berkeley-choreographed amalgam of a realistic nightclub dance grafted onto a staged performance. Miraculous. The Faustian plot—Joe gets a reprieve from death and Hell in order to prove himself worthy for heaven--was too gooey for my taste, but the screenplay, performances and magnificent visual style more than made up for that. Highly recommended.

KARATE KID, 2010

This is a feel-good movie, but it’s the best feel-good movie I’ve seen in years. It is well crafted, and kept my attention riveted. Jackie Chan plays an aging janitor with a personal tragedy and a kung fu past. He reluctantly takes on the task of preparing Jaden Smith (Will Smith’s son) to fight in a kung fu tournament as a way to prove himself and earn the respect of bullies at his school in China, where his mom’s job transfer lands him. The film presents the combative China, as well as the merciful one, represented by Chan and a girl schoolmate who likes Jaden. It gets past the romantic, distant, foreign China, to one where we see the ordinary grungy facts of daily life in working-class neighborhoods. Settings include gorgeous brick architecture gone seedy, great perspectives of the Great Wall, throngs of uniform kung fu players. Jaden is the type of snarky, self-indulgent kid I’d want to avoid at all costs, but even he could not destroy the uplifting timbre of the narrative. Despite some hard to believe passages, some too-quick learning by Javed, the movie is kept convincing, largely through Chan’s stellar and unusual performance, as well as the natural way the Chinese kids behave. The access to China is remarkable, and makes the inhabitants seem a lot like us. You may frequently need to wipe away the tears. I did.

Two Movies

SECONDHAND LIONS, 2003
The lighting is dim and mellow as it plays throughout the shadowy, beautifully disheveled old farm house that two ancient brothers own, and as it illuminates the hard-scrabble vistas of the rural-Texas setting where large 1950s vehicles bounce along dusty dirt roads.. In this coming-of-age saga Haley Joel Osment plays a boy left at the Texas ranch of eccentric uncles (the brothers) Michael Caine and Robert Duvall. Duvall is in his element. Michael Caine less so, The uncles regale Osment with amazing tales of their past, which include adventures in the French Foreign Legion and saving a princess from slave traders and an Arab sheik. Yearning for the old days of adventure, they acquire and intend to shoot for sport an old lion, but the decrepitude of the lion gives them pause, as does the boy’s rapport with her. The movie kept my attention throughout, although the clarity and maturity of the Osment character seemed unlikely.


DINNER FOR SCHMUCKS, 2010,

This “screwball comedy” film is the American adaptation of the French film, (The Dinner of Cretins). Steve Carell is extremely convincing as an idiot-savant who is too dim to know that he’s being used as a promotional gimmick for the so-star’s corporate ambitions. He makes wonderful dioramas, with dead mice impersonating characters in famous paintings. Carell miraculously maintains the characterization of his zany but pure-hearted role. Paul Rudd is the corporate guy, and didn’t interest me as much. Perhaps due to its French inspiration, there are sex themes that push the envelope a bit. As much by what it includes as by what it leaves out, the film brings up a question about movies and monogamy. Rudd’s art-curator girlfriend is wooed by an artist with animal magnetism whom she represents. Does one have to end up with the girl, or can they both share her?

THE LOVE PARADE, 1929

This musical comedy starring Jeanette MacDonald as the Queen of Silvania and Maurice Chevalier as the count whom she marries, plays on the war of the sexes. He is less than thrilled over his marital obligation to be docile, and obedient to the queen. At various moments he displays righteous indignation, charm, tenderness, and trickery. The musical performance, although the first feature film for MacDonald, establishes her in the operetta genre with which she would always be associated. I enjoyed the fragile look of the film--like thin paper stretched over a frame, but starting to crack and fall apart. The sound is similarly crackly and thin. Through age, perhaps, the film glows like a ghost in the night. The music works despite the limitations of Chevalier’s voice. Hollywood of this era was fixated on European royalty, into which it stirs baudy, sexy routines from American vaudeville. It’s entertaining to see how these qualities blend and go toward defining romantic popular music and exuberant musical comedy of later years. The stage sets are astoundingly opulent, and I wonder how much of them were simply painted. Hard to tell. This the first talking picture by director Ernst Lubitsch, and it won some awards, including being nominated for six Oscars.

LOST HORIZON, 1932

What an unusual movie! Ronald Coleman is a British Foreign Secretary, who gets shanghaied from Shanghai with a party of British types. The plane which carries them crash lands near the legendary, fabled Shangri La, whence a greeting party has meanwhile been dispatched. The physical film, which had been damaged and restored, feels as much a rarified treasure as Shangri La itself. The plot is set in the Himalayas, near Tibet. It is permeated by an intense feeling of cold, isolation and altitude. Shangri La is like an oasis in this hostile environment, its mild weather resulting from high protective mountain ranges. Despite a lack of amenities like public plumbing, its gleaming white buildings resemble something from a World’s Fair. Shangri La turns out to be a stand-in for the liberal tradition of the West. No one struggles. There is no money, only exchange. People can live for centuries. It is polite to give up your wife to someone who wants her badly (of course, seen from a male perspective). It is prescient of modern times, and talks about similar social ills, including greed and environmental destruction, to those which plague us now. Coleman's worldly career happened despite his deep longing for a better world. The books he has written about his utopian dreams have been read by some at Shangri La. They include the girl and the founder, who are convinced that he belongs there. The party from the plane, including Coleman, react in different ways to the possibility of “escape.”

THE MODEL

R was our model. As I struggled with my makeshift easel, she offered to help me through the door. I said I was fine but thanks, and entered behind her. Her gait seemed wobbly, as though the leg joints were worn down and slid from side to side. She is slender. She appears to live simply, so I can’t attribute the smoked-chicken tone of her body to tanning. Maybe that’s her natural color. Her age was hard to pin down. She looked old and young at one and the same time. The wrinkles on her chiseled face were prominent enough to notice, while not enough to detract from a sense of youthfulness. I’m guessing she’s in her early 60’s, although Sandi thinks she might be older. Her body is wonderful, with firm breasts—only with imagination can one discern hints of incipient sagging. Wrinkles on her abdomen are concentrated in one or two places, and don’t detract from her otherwise tight skin. While she took lovely poses, none of them showed her back. Her bottom might have been wrinkled, but one of two glimpses of it as she got in and out of poses showed nothing that would detract from her overall appeal to average male tastes (well, to men of a certain age). Her hair was bundled roughly on top of her head. It was a sort of khaki colored—dyed, certainly-- that blended with her skin. She let it down for the final pose, the subject of this drawing. Her vulva was surprisingly narrow. The facts of her age, personality and physical appearance made me think of her as someone I could have known well but never seen naked. I prefer to think of her that way.

BOOGIE NIGHTS, 1997

This movie will take you on a trip and bring you back. Amid swimming pools, nightclubs and booze, it's immersed in a sleazy world, ruled over by LA porn film maker par excellence, Burt Reynolds. The film itself seems trashy, as cheap as the lives around Burt (Jack Horner), but the intermingling disco and classical music and the smooth, slick, hallucinogenic scene changes, are interesting. Enough to compensate for the broken people and the orgy of fuckups? Dunno. The cast is spectacular, including Mark Wahlberg (whose vicissitudes as porn celebrity anchor the story), Julianne Moore, Don Cheadle, William H. Macy and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. So it’s a great cast, and Reynolds was nominated for an Oscar, but I still don’t get it. The film features failure, frustration, ambition, drugs, murder, and a sort of redemption, and was more about these than about porn. While there was a lot of purported porn, the relentless cutting away of anything juicy was bothersome. I think of the trend toward non-simulated sex in mainstream movie—e.g., The brown Bunny and Shortbus. Would this movie be better had it gone that route?

THE NEW FACE OF HOMELESSNESS

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/12/homeless-america_n_808339.html


The new middle class homelessness. While the article focuses on an unfortunate woman, the cover photo shows a possible way out of her predicament, and a possible way out for others in her circumstances.

The photo is of a beautiful RV, lit by bright sun. A well groomed man is attending to his equally presentable son. He had the intelligence and clarity of mind to crease a deck from planks, supporting it on small rocks gathered in the yard. It cost nothing, other than, perhaps, for the planks. It's a nice, sunny space that a child would like. The family has a roof over their head, and they have transportation. While this is the face of poverty in the USA, it is paradise by the living standards of half the world. Between living on the streets and living in a Mc Mansion, there are many viable options still open to us.

LEFT VS. RIGHT

Events of the past three days make me think once again of our political dilemma. I think the Right is fundamentally wrong, and that the Left is fundamentally right. I do believe, however, in carefully giving this alligator of the Right its due, treating it as a force of nature to be respected, but that must be contained for the benefit of humanity. I believe that the margins between our two camps can be rendered soft and relatively porous. And I'm for working assiduously to bring this about.

There are the famous stories of Tip O’Neil knocking back a few with Reagan at night, and being a fierce partisan by day. This is a good model for legislators (and us) to follow. It can’t hurt to find opportunities for friendship and cooperation.

We have to avoid being overwhelmed with bitterness by our fundamental disagreements, and try our utmost to bridge the chasm without sacrificing our principles. I believe that we should hold fast to our GOALS while negotiating with the Right on TACTICS. The right leans in a direction that brings out the need for creativity. Dems need to embrace this quality, guarding against its tendency to be overly mechanical and cerebral. This means embracing faith-based and market initiatives. It means being able to embrace American exceptionalism. More than anything, it means thinking outside the box, all toward creating a more caring, compassionate and sensible nation.

HEAVENS ABOVE, 1963

Considered a satirical masterpiece, and ahead of its time, the plot features Peter Sellers as a humble, caring vicar accidentally assigned to a comfortable, snobbish English country village in place of an upper-class cleric with the same name. The black and white picture quality is iridescent, like sand sculpture sprayed silver. The credits, showing the town, convey a feeling for the emerging and exciting pop-art aesthetic of the time. Sellers’ cockney accent and disregard for upper-class norms, as well as his prominent, slightly hooked nose, reminds me of John Lennon, who was ascending with the Beatles during that period. In this immaculately crafted, low budget film, Sellers influences the town’s dowager and chief business scion to give her riches to the poor. But all does not go well. One of her memorable quotes: “There’s a conspiracy to prevent one doing good.” The bewildered archdeacon is amusing, too, as he talks of Sellers’ child-like directness and “quite unjustifiable happiness.” There is outstanding truth of types. The gypsies that the vicar takes in are parasites, but are shown in the round, not as stereotypes. Brock Peters plays the genial West Indian immigrant and garbage collector selected by Sellers to be the vicar’s assistant, causing many to display the racial attitudes of the time.

BRINGING IN THE NEW YEAR

There is no nicer way to bring in a new year than to watch a Marx Brothers marathon. And that is what TCM presented this New Year’s Eve. Among those I sat through or glimpsed were Animal Crackers, Monkey Business, Horse Feathers, Duck Soup and A Night at the Oper, all from the early 30’s.

Marx Brothers films are like musicals; you can look at them repeatedly and never get tired. Correction: They are musicals. They all include music and dance performances. In Monkey Business, Groucho dances with the hoodlum’s wife. He’s clowning, but he’s really dancing too. They dance on the floor, then dance on the bed, as if it were another dance platform, then dance on the floor again. I think of Astaire’s sofa-stunt choreography--dancing onto and capsizing the sofa--during a dance years later. Groucho’s is like a rough sketch for later, more polished performances. Harpo is a musician, a wonderful, under-appreciated harpist. But the non-stop jokes are timed in a way not unlike musical performances.

There is inspiration in these films too. In Monkey Business, the villain, tall, mean, dangerous, is on the verge of bumping off Groucho, But Groucho shows that you don’t have to respond according to program. He continues being a wiseass even as death hovers over him, and this unlikely behavior actually saves him!