Wednesday, June 30, 2010

End Of July. 2010. Paint, collage, pencil on Paper.

Monday, June 28, 2010

A Couple of Lousy B's







Recently I watched two B movies that are part of a series called “forgotten Noir” and these two duds should find a hole to fall into and be forgotten forever. Both are part of one of those double bill dvds that occasionally appear that usually feature B programmers and 2nd feature movies. The first one “Portland Expose” begins with a documentary style voice over telling us how wonderful Portland was until corruption and vice took over their fair city. We next see Edward Binns and his Wife Virginia Gregg getting ready to open their newly bought tavern, and are being pitched big time by some guy to put in pin ball games to liven up the place and hey he might be able to make 20.00 a night on them. Binns lights up when he hears this and takes one on. Soon he’s being pressured and roughed by a another group of gangsters who want to take over the business of supplying pin ball machines along with the taking over of the unions and other fun things like prostitution. At first Binns refuses, but with the threat of acid being thrown and violence promised to his family including his nitwit teenage daughter and annoying young son he backs down and agrees to go along with the gang. One of the thugs is a pedophile (now this was somewhat risky back in 1957) played by a young Frank Gorshin before he took off doing imitations of Kirk Douglas and other show biz types. Gorshin who can’t keep his hands off young things, tries to rape Binns daughter and that’s when things start to get nasty and Binns decides to go undercover for the good guys and get the dirt on the crooks. He walks around with a very large recorder under his shirt (is that a recorder under your shirt or are you just happy to see me) which is one of the more ridiculous touches in this badly done programmer. One of the more subtle subtexts of the film is how the sordidness and cheap thrills that are offered up to Binns start to appeal to him; some of the B-girls really turn him on. There are also a few nice character actor stints, especially swell was the little known Lea Penman who plays a somewhat overweight high class (for this movie anyway) call girl Madame and her entrance in high heels and cheap fur wrap walking down an airport runway is a delight. The problem with the film is the direction by Harold D. Schuster who made such gems as Queer Cargo, (now that’s one that I would love to see), South to Karanga, The Postman Didn't Ring and many other forgotten little B’s. His direction is sluggish and cheap with badly executed action scenes along with the lousy script doesn’t help either. There is only one good scene (besides Ms. Penman’s already mentioned entrance) and that is the killing of Gorshin in which he is thrown under a freight train (the look of glee on his killer’s face as the train passes over his body is chilling). Also the cast is less than stellar with Edward Binns and Virginia Gregg doing yawn work. There is some nice Portland location photography but otherwise this is a big disappointment, and besides it’s not even Noir. The other cheap flick on the disc is really no better, and no noir. I guess you could say that the plot of this 1954 film “They Were So Young” in which a model agency in Rio de Janeiro is actually a front for a white-slavery ring that kidnaps European women and sells them on the South American sex market was quite risque, adventurous and way ahead of it’s time. That may be true, but again this film is so inept and badly directed that I finally could care less. With a silly plot that’s all over the place and a low budget cast that features Raymond Burr (any film that he’s in you just know that he is going to be the villain) and the aging pretty boy hunk B movie actor Scott Brady who was the brother of bad boy actor Lawrence Tierney. This was a German made production with many of the German actors dubbed and if you're quick you can spot in a small part Gert Frobe as the captain of a riverboat pleasure club- bordello. I will say that the clothes that the models parade around in order to temp the rich paying customers to try their wares were terrific, and unbelievably Michael Wilson and Dalton Trumbo both worked on the script and were uncredited because of the blacklist. Judging by this film they got off easy not having their names attached to this garbage. The characters and the actors who play them are made of cardboard and the lousy direction is by Kurt Neumann who is probably best known for directing the original “The Fly” in 1958, but some of his other titles peak my interest such as My Pal, the King, Wide Open Faces, Brooklyn Orchid and Two Mugs from Brooklyn. A couple of not so entertaining B movies that are easily skipped.

I've included some photos of the very beautiful Scott Brady.

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Old paintings from the 70's & 80's recently photographed












Friday, June 25, 2010

The African Queen. 1951




I’m still jumping up and down over the fact that The African Queen has finally come to Dvd, and in one of the most beautiful restorations I have yet seen. The film is without doubt a classic, a movie that works on all levels, the fine direction by the great John Huston, the screenplay by the equally great James Agree (that alone should make this film mandatory viewing especially for anyone interested in how to write a screenplay), and the performances of Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn and who ever said that oil and water don’t mix? This is a real off the wall casting idea that one would think would have been turned down by whoever approves these kind of decisions, but happily it wasn’t and to watch these two actors at the top of their game is so fine and pleasurable that it should almost be against the law. The story is based on the book by C.S. Forester about two sad sacks whose lives get tossed and turned (literally) simply because they are in the wrong place at the wrong time which in this case is German occupied Africa at the start of World War I. Hepburn plays the spinster Rose (the first of many such roles for her) who along with her brother acted by the impeccable Robert Morley run a small Methodist missionary which is destroyed by German soldiers who burn and abduct the villagers to fight in their army. Morley is destroyed in his mind by this and his short but moving death scene is superb. Hepburn who is left alone among the burnt out remains of the village is rescued by the improbable Bogart as Charlie Alnutt a river rat who goes up and down the water ways in his small run down boat the African Queen delivering goods and mail, a small run down man who likes his gin and his simple life. The rest of the film is taken up with their journey on the river, which changes their lives for good. Memorable scenes abound, the ride down the rapids, the leeches, Hepburn dumping Bogie’s gin overboard, the two of them pulling the boat through the marshes, their attempt at blowing up a German war ship and the sweet and touching love that develops between them. They actually made most of the film on location and there are many stories about the difficulty of the shoot (Hepburn even wrote a book about it) plus there’s a pretty good one hour documentary on the making of the film as an extra on the dvd. The color cinematography is by the great Jack Cardiff who many consider to be one of the greatest color cinematographers in the history of film if not the greatest, and viewing the restoration of the film easily attests to this opinion. Granted the film might look a bit quaint to some 2010 viewers who like their computer generated films to be big, loud and seamless and there are some easy to pick out process shots, studio shot scenes and the use of miniatures but for me this only added to the simple beauty and charm of the film. Bogart won an Oscar for his performance over some pretty stiff competition including Marlon Brando for A Streetcar Name Desire (he was the only actor from the film not to win an Oscar) and Montgomery Clift for A Place In The Sun. Surprisingly even though Huston received an Oscar nomination for his flawless direction, the film did not receive a best picture nomination, instead the academy fools nominated Decision Before Dawn (remember that one?) and Quo Vadis two films that sit at the bottom of the deep Oscar well of forgotten films and bad nominations where they belong while The African Queen still sails on and on.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Et Cetera


Et Cetera the on line literary magazine asked me to illustrate 4 poems by Jos Smith. You can view them at this link.

http://etceterart.blogspot.com/

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

The Member Of The Wedding. 1952


It’s rare when Broadway plays or musicals are turned into films and the original stars are cast for the film. There are exceptions of course Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire, Rosalind Russell in Auntie Mame, Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl, but more often than not the original actor or actress are cast aside for a more bankable star. The other night I watched a film version of a strong Broadway play from the early 1950’s that featured all three of the original Broadway Cast. The film was “The Member Of The Wedding” and happily Julie Harris, Ethel Waters and Brandon de Wilde were allowed to recreate their stage performances for this 1952 Fred Zinnerman directed film that was based on the play and novel by Carson McCullers. This famous story about a 12 year old tomboy and outcast who is reaching out for maturity and her own place in the world is something that many of us can relate to. Harris was 27 years old at the time of the movie, and her performance is so good that I never doubted that this was a 12 year old gawky gifted adolescent. Harris in her movie debut is brilliant and very touching as the conflicted Frankie Addams who doesn’t know who she is or where she belongs. Her Frankie is angry, annoying and neurotic but she is also smart, imaginative and caring, especially so with the black housekeeper Bernice played by the extraordinary Ethel Waters and her young cousin who lives next door John Henry played with depth beyond measure by the young Brandon de Wilde who also made his movie debut. The story follows a few days during a hot summer down south (actually filmed in Colusa California) as the Addams family gets ready for the wedding of the soldier boy son and his pretty young thing of a fiancé. The main conflict of the story arises when Frankie truly believes that she will be allowed to go with her brother and new sister in law on their honeymoon and to take part in their life because as she says they are “the we of me“. Sadness and heartbreak of course follows with much more on the way before the film ends on a note of guarded optimism . Most of the action of the play and film takes place in the kitchen of the Addam’s theatrical & more than rundown house, but Zinnerman opens the film up nicely and is helped a great deal by the brilliant cinematographer Hal Mohr who began his career in 1915 and serves up many beautiful close-ups of the actors notably in the scene in the kitchen as dusk comes on and Waters sings the gospel "His Eye is On the Sparrow" while cradling Harris and de Wilde in her arms. It doesn’t get any better than this. Harris received a best actress Oscar nomination losing out to another Broadway star who at 45 was also making her movie debut in a role that she also created on Broadway, Shirley Booth in “Come Back Little Sheba.” With a music score by Alex North, and a beautiful crisp dvd transfer.
The photo used is one of my favorite photographs by the great Ruth Orkin. Member Of The Wedding Party. 1951. Julie Harris, Ethel Waters, Carson McCullers; opening night party.

Monday, June 21, 2010

The Limits Of Control 2009


There is no doubt in my mind that Jim Jarmusch is a talented and intriguing director who made one of my favorite films of the 90’s Dead man. However his latest film “The Limits of Control” is a hit and miss affair with Jarmusch juggling many genres in the thin air along with references to film, literature and pop culture plus obtuse interludes with secondary characters who are captivating and intriguing in various degrees. This game or rebus of a movie is ostensibly about a cool detached hit man played by the cool detached actor Isaach De Bankole who has a preference for tight form-fitting iridescent blue suits and purple shirts, and is on a mission that at times seems impossible for the viewer (me) to deal with. Jarmusch holds off letting us know who De Bankole is going to hit until the final minutes of the film, and by that time I could care less and had me thinking “all of that for this?” The movie begins conventionally enough with an airport scene where the lone man, as he is known gets his puzzling philosophical instructions from two operatives who are lounging about and who send him on his way to Spain to do the job. Not so fast because the game is just beginning. In Spain the lone man visits museums where he views paintings which soon appear as objects and clues that the mysterious secondary characters give to him after asking the question “You don’t speak Spanish, do you?” By the 3rd or 4th time we hear this ludicrous question, I was ready to scream or fling my ice cream sandwich at the television. They also exchange cute little matchboxes, which contain writings on small pieces of paper, and in one case diamonds. Tilda Swinton shows up in a blonde wig and cowboy hat, looking like John Kelly in his Joni Mitchell drag and gives a small talk about how she loves movies. Swell and great we all love movies and this one is so overloaded with movie references that I swear it started to tilt to one side of my television screen. I immediately thought of Welles (who Swinton also refers to) and of course Godard and Hitchcock. One of the operatives who turn up is a sweltering nude hot babe (just before she shows up the lone man is seen viewing a painting of a nude young woman in the museum, and how cool is that) who tries to seduce the lone man in having sex with her, which he won’t do, because he doesn’t have sex when working. This reminded me of the Godard “Laziness” sequence in Seven Deadly Sins in which Eddie Constantine is too lazy to have sex with a seductive young thing. Contempt also comes to mind. The game goes on and on and I wasn’t exactly bored as I was numbed by the repetitiveness of the plot. John Hurt and an awful looking Gael García Bernal pop up in cameos as does Bill Murray who is the big bad capitalist and prey for the lone man. The highlight of the film is the lush deep color saturated cinematography by the great Christopher Doyle.

Open Box #4 1971. 15" x 11 1/2" x 10" + detail


Sunday, June 20, 2010

Open Box #9. 1971. 7" x 5 x 10" Mixed




















The original notebook sketch, the piece itself and several details.

Friday, June 18, 2010

Hartley
























Just finished reading Marsden Hartley The Biography Of An American Artist by Townsend Ludington, and I wish I could recommend it, but I really can’t. I found it too dry and dead. I mean Hartley lived during the most interesting and exciting times of the Twentieth Century but the author to my mind doesn’t capture the spirit or color of the period. I also would have liked to know more about his sexuality, and I don’t mean in a prurient way. I don’t know if the author is gay or not, but he pretty much sidesteps Hartley’s homosexuality. Of course it’s there but it almost as if Hartley wasn’t gay. He also misses opportunities to discuss his friendships with other gay artists, Demuth is mentioned but then he’s dead and gone. To be fair he does touch on some of Hartley’s unpleasant traits including his dance with Nazism and his anti-Semitism “He did not agree with the nazis policies toward the Jews, but he thought they had some right to want to purify their nation and he half sympathized with their charge that the Jews had over stepped their privileges. “If (the Nazis) must have them out of politics, out of art, out of banking, that is their business.” He also wanted very much to meet Hitler. Needless to say this information about one of my favorite artists is troubling. The author also leaves a dull and flat impression of the spirit of the times in New York, Paris and Berlin, I would have liked more details and color, and also Ludington’s portraits of all the famous and exciting artists and writers of the period that Hartley knew are gray. There was a lot of pain and suffering in his life, poverty, neglect, hostility to the art world, gee sounds familiar, and the time that he destroyed over 100 of his paintings because he could not afford the storage fee was heartbreaking, and he died just when his extraordinary work was getting the attention and rewards that they so deserved.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Lil Picard Exhibition



There is a charming and quite marvelous small retrospective of the artist, writer and art world legend Lil Picard now on view at the Grey Art Gallery at NYU. I should note here that I knew Lil as did ...practically everyone who was active in the art world of the 1950’s and onward and I found her to be a very nice and interesting woman. She was born in Germany in 1899, wow and died in 1994 so she was nearly 100 years old when she passed wow. She had a life that could make a good film, escaping from Hitler’s Germany, arriving in New York City with her second husband Dell, who was a sweet and charming man, Lil became a designer of hats, and the lover of many. She was soon involved with the New York Art Scene, and did happenings and theatre pieces along with her collages, assemblages and paintings and wrote extensively on the New York Art Scene for German publications. Lil was also a strong feminist, political activist and like most of us was involved in the Anti-War Vietnam Movement. I recall seeing many of her art works at her apartment when I would visit her, but I really got to know her work a few years after her death when an art appraiser I knew asked me to work with him on her estate. There were tons of pieces or so it seemed and it took many weeks to measure and catalog each work, and sometimes the task took its toll on me, making me depressed and anxious. The show which is very nicely put together features probably the best pieces by her, and happily the show is not top heavy with her paintings which I thought the weakest of her art. I always liked her self taught looking assemblages and collages which are messy and full, and there are many of these in the show including her pointed cosmetic ones, all nicely installed. These are works that you want to pat on the head, maybe give a pinch to the cheek and a nice big hug. The show is on until July 10th.

photo of me and Lil Picard taking part in World Works 1970

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Magic Marker Paintings. 1968. Different Sizes.
























I was 19 years old when I did these.

Small Brick Structure In A Box 1971. Mixed. 7" x 5" x 4 1/4"

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Untitled Sculpture. 1983. Mixed. 9" x 8 1/2" x 3"

San Diego Boxes. 1984. Mixed.





Each box measures 8 1/2" x 3 1/8" x 4 1/2"

Saturday, June 12, 2010

Sherlock Holmes. 2009.



I was hoping that the newest Sherlock Holmes film would be a Victorian children’s pop up book of a movie but instead it’s a loud confusing superhero video game for easily bored teens. Using the overused plot that many Victorian thrillers have been using of late you know the one about the secret or...ganization with the evil supposedly upstanding citizens plotting to take over the world or committing grisly murders or both. But this film pushes it up and out of the 19th century into the 21st by the use of fast, dizzying and gimmicky editing along with violent and way too many unnecessary fight scenes that are so dark and kinetic that at times you can’t tell who is hitting whom. Robert Downey plays the great detective and Jude Law his loyal sidekick but they are both way too modern to do any justice to their Victorian poses and are not very compelling or endearing to boot. There is some subliminal homoeroticism back and forth between them, which we’ve come to expect from contemporary interpretations of Holmes and Watson, (I guess this began with Billy Wilder’s much more subtle and elegant The Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes) but Guy Ritchie plays it safe and introduces a romantic foil played by the very attractive and appealing Rachel McAdams as the shifty and thieving Irene Adler for Sherlock and a nearly invisible fiancé pushed into the frames for Watson which no doubt was introduced to ward off any walking out on the movie by the teens and young women who had probably ventured into the theatres or rented the film to see these two heartthrobs strut their macho stuff. The plot which is thin and stringy is very confusing with too many characters who come and go and go and come and lots of dialogue that gets lost because of the loud heart pounding score and the lightly spoken conversations and studied British accent that Downey puts on, not very convincingly I might add. Downey can be very fine when playing lost and bewildered American schnooks and losers, but to me he is totally miscast as Holmes. Jude Law is his usual eye candy self but he’s way too young and unlived in to play Watson, Holmes’s much put upon friend and partner in solving crimes and sharing rooms. The story line is dense and confusing (no less than five writers are credited with writing the screenplay) with a very unsatisfying ending where everything is hastily explained and tied up into a not so neat little package and placed in a Victorian Chinese box. Granted the film which was photographed by the great Philippe Rousselot looks beautiful, grimy and gross with great computer generated effects and really cool details and there is one terrific big French giant of a villain who livens things up a bit, but overall my heart still belongs to Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. .

Friday, June 11, 2010

Horse Race. 1964. Paint On Board. 20" x 30"



I did this when I was a teenager for an art class.

Wednesday, June 09, 2010

Natie's Dream. 1989. Mixed. 13 1/4" x 10 1/4" x 9 3/4" +Details




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