Two More Nice Paintings done by my senior art class

Vito Acconci-1940-2017

sorry to hear of Vito's passing. I knew him well in the early 70's when he was still a poet. He was intense and for me meeting him when I was 20 was quite something. As is the case so many times we grew apart and lost touch. The stories I could tell.

Jonathan Demme 1944-2017

I am so sick and disgusted of losing the good, and trump and palin, and nugent still walk this earth. I had big problems with silence of the lambs, but he made the greatest rock doc. ever the sublime stop making sense, and there were many memorable moments in something wild, swing shift, rachel getting married, philadelphia. Fed up with this shit. Why? enough already. Take Jeff Sessions or Mitch McConnell and leave us alone with our good guys and gals.

senior class

A beautiful drawing and painting by one of my senior students.

Notebook drawing April 2017

Magdalena Abakanowicz 1930-2017

Quad

I went yesterday to the newly reopened Quad Theatre in the village to see Terrence Davie's new bio on Emily Dickinson (maybe more on the film later on). The theatre still is made up of 4 small theatres, they call them high end private screening rooms, and I had my problems with them. First of all the seats are too low and not very comfortable I don't care if they are imported from Norway. I had to sit on my jacket to reach the proper level comfortable for me. The big big no no with the theatre I was in is that the red exit sign is too close to the screen (as you can see from the photo) and gives off a red glowing band on the right side of the screen including when the film was playing. This is very bad and took away from my enjoyment of the film, especially during the dark scenes. I can't imagine any filmmaker being happy with seeing their film this way. The ticket prices are also high $15.00 with 12.00 for seniors. They also have a bar and a really nice give away program that is elegant and very expensive looking. I was told that they would be doing these little 36pg. full color numbers every month, which I don't see how they can afford to do this every month. I sent them an email with my complaints but surprise I have not heard back.

Oddball

My latest post on Oddball.


https://oddballmagazine.com/2017/04/19/poem-by-michael-la-bombarda-2/

Notebook drawing April 2017

movie reviews

For anyone interested you can now read all my film reviews at this link there are over 300 of them.

https://letterboxd.com/irajoel/films/reviews/

Michael Ballhaus 1935-2017

One of our great cinematographers has passed. But Sean Spicer and Donald Trump still walk

this earth Unfair.

Paterson 2016

           A near perfect sweet gentle note  about the art of making art from that unique and singular moviemaker Jim Jarmusch. Set in the run down rumble tumble once proud industrial New Jersey city of Paterson it stars the wonderful Adam Driver as Paterson (I kid you not) who drives a bus during the day. He listens to and observes his passengers as we do, and writes poetry during his lunch breaks down by the beautiful Paterson falls and at night in his cramped office down in the basement.
                     I would also call Paterson the man a sweet and gentle note who lives with his charming sweetheart of a girlfriend Laura, played by the Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani who stays at home and bakes cupcakes for the local farmer’s market and paints everything in sight with bold black and white designs including the shower curtains and her clothes.
             Jarmusch lets us into their unassuming quiet and routine lives for a week, as we watch them wake up every morning and set about on their days’ journey. They also have a dog who is a stout small English bulldog who turns out to be the cause of the one tragic moment in this poem of a movie. It’s an eccentric film not for everyone or maybe not for anyone, but that’s what we come to expect from Jarmusch and this is what I love about his stuff.
            Poetry. The film was riveting and memory laden for me. Ron Padgett a leading member of the 2^nd generation New York School of Poets wrote the actual poems that glide across the screen as Paterson writes them down in his secret notebook, and because of this they have a real presence and authority about them. I know Ron, and for many years I owned a lovely painting by Joe Brainard,  a self portrait of him at an easel painting Ron’s wife Pat. It hung in my loft until I left the building and couldn’t take it with me, so I stored it with a friend. Joe gave it to me; well he said I could pick out a painting from his show at a gallery we both exhibited in during the early 70’s. I wanted to give him a piece of mine, but he said no that he couldn’t take the responsibility of owning it. I had trouble at the time understanding this but I now totally get this fear of owning and the responsibility it entails especially as I get older.      
                         I really wanted one of his gorgeous dog paintings but they were all sold, so I took the self-portrait and brought it home on the subway. I shudder to think that I actually did this, but I also carried a delicate wax piece from Lynda Benglis this same way, and pretty much brought all my work for my first show at this gallery on the subway  a little bit at a time. Crazy and eccentric.
             I finally decided that I didn’t want the responsibility of owning this lovely painting and I got in touch with Ron and gifted it to him and Pat where it now rightly resides. William Carlos Williams the poet of the city also plays a big part in the film, there are many references to him and his falls and his poetry. Williams like many poets and indeed artists made a living from real jobs and occupations and still do. Williams was a pediatric doctor and I remember Bob Smithson telling me that he was his doctor. Did I imagine this, was it a dream?  No it was real, and reading an interview with Jarmusch he also makes note of this fact. I’ve known many poets and still do. I loved and lived with one for eight years, and I’ve collaborated with 100’s of them over time and still do. Some of my best friends are and were poets and the film for me has a tint of sadness to it because of this, and because many of them are no longer here. The beautiful cinematography done digitally is by the great Frederick Elmes. One of the best films of 2016    

Tim Pigott-Smith 1946-2017

Another great actor has passed but Mitch McConnell still walks this earth. Unfair.

Notebook drawing April 2017

Rose Hamlin 1945-2017

Rosie & The Originals. Angel Baby. That voice
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xm3qnh1sck

Oddball

New art posted along with a poem by Anne Whitehouse on Oddball today. You can view it at the link below.
  
https://oddballmagazine.com/2017/04/05/poem-by-anne-whitehouse-7/

The Hanging Tree 1959

A little known western directed by Delmar Davis who had a good run in Hollywood and is mostly known for his sugar sweet teen romance movies of the early 60's like “Parrish”, “Susan Slade”, “Rome Adventure” and his most most “A Summer Place all of which starred that great thespian Troy Donahue. He also made the very good Bogart Bacall noirish film in the late 40’s “Dark Passage” with a terrific shrewish performance from Agnes Moorehead and a slew of westerns including the highly regarded 3:10 to Yuma.

Here we have a late performance from the great Gary Cooper who would be gone in 3 years but was still impressive and attractive (he had major plastic surgery a year before filming started) as a secretive and closed off Dr. Frail who rides into the rough and tough thrown together gold mining town of skull Creek and takes up residence in a log cabin and begins his medical practice.

This is a pretty good movie thanks to strong casting including a couple of baddies played by Karl Malden and George C. Scott in his film debut as a reckless dangerous bible touting crazy religious fanatic son of a bitch. Notable also is the beautiful Maria Schell as a victim of a stagecoach hold-up who winds up lost in the desert and is found near death suffering from burns and blindness caused by the sun.

Cooper takes charge and puts her on the mend, but is removed and callous with her. Also in the mix is a young Ben Piazza who makes a strong debut as a drifter and a thief and is taken under the protection of Cooper for a price. Piazza who was handsome and intense didn’t do many films after this one, but had a hefty tv career sadly dying in 1991 from AIDS related cancer. The film looks good in its widescreen technicolor on location footage splendor, but suffers from a somewhat rushed ending which is too pat and unconvincing. The characters have some funny names like Frail, Frenchy, Grubb, Society Red, Wonder, Edna Flaunce & Rune and this adds some off beat zest to the proceedings and the terrible title song actually got an Oscar nomination losing to the equally terrible “High Hopes”.