Martin Mull 1943-2024

 

Audrey Flack 1931-2024

 

Donald Sutherland 1935-2024 A life on film.

 

Anouk Aimee 1932-2024

 Who didn't love Anouk?

june 2024 mixed on paper

 

M 1951

 

No not the Fritz Lang 1931 version, but the Joseph Losey 1951 remake. The remake follows the original story, a child murderer is loose in the city, this time the city is Los Angeles and the police and city hall are at the ends of their rope trying to nab the murderer. As in the original the low lives, beggars and criminals take over the search and soon have their hands on him where they bring him to trial in a kangaroo court which also follows the course of the original film.

The cast is good led by David Wayne as the killer and a slew of lefties, commies and pinkos many on their way to the House Un-American Activities Committee, jail time, blacklisted and oblivion as their careers lie tattered and torn on the floor of Congress.

The cast included Howard Da Silva, Luther Adler, Karen Morley and Norman Lloyd all victims of the House Committee in various degrees along with non blacklisted actors Martin Gable, Steve Brodie, Raymond Burr, Glenn Anders and Jim Backus. Losey who was an avowed commie was hounded by the committee and finally left the country for Europe, returning for a while, but because of his not being able to find work left for Europe for good and beginning his lucrative 2^nd and 3^rd act in movies.

Filmed in a noir street cinematography look by Ernest Laszlo mostly on actual streets in L.A. Most notably in the run down long lost Victorian neighborhood of Bunker Hill and in the great architectural wonder that is the Bradbury Building which at this time was in failing health. The look of the film has the tattered feel of street photography which adds interest for me. Its not the expressionistic bold look of the original German film,but it has its own down low look. Its 1951 in L.A. And the images are full of details of the time: ashtrays overflowing with butts, small early t.v.s, rotary phones, and lots of signs and images of the period, coca cola signs, run down amusement parks, dingy apartments with low gray light coming through windows, rickety staircases and worn out people. Both versions are their own works of art, and I have been looking for the Losey version for years, I finally found it in a terrific restored version on Rare Filmm. The Cave of Forgotten Films. Not to be missed.

Tony Lo Bianco 1936-2024

 

Yossi & Jagger 2002 Yossi 2012

 

Two Israeli movies directed by the out gay director Eyton Fox that explores the life of a young gay man Yossi and his tragic love affair with Jagger during their days in the army on the Israel Lebanon border and his life 10 years later.

The first film Yossi & Jagger was made in 2002 and Yossi the sequel was released 10 years later. I can't think of another set of films that explores one characters life journey that were made 10 years apart. I'm not talking about sequels, remakes, series or real time films or documentaries. The film stars the wonderful Israeli actor and an Eyton Fox regular Ohad Knoller as Yossi and Yehuda Levi as Jagger.

In the first film Yossi and Jagger are two gay young men forging ahead in a sexual relationship that is as tense and fraught with danger as the shooting war they are involved in on the Israel Lebanon border. Lior who is nicknamed Jagger because of his rock star good looks and his love for The Rolling Stones is upbeat and fun. He is the 2nd in command to Yossi's who is the commander of the troops.

Yossi who is closed,closeted and up tight about his relationship with Jagger, while Jagger as I said is upbeat and fun in their clandestine meet ups that mostly take place out in the desert while they are on patrol. The main settings are the tight claustrophobic barracks that are symbolic for the main characters relationship with each other and with their fellow soldiers that include several female soldiers who are more then smitten with Jagger who has no interest in their love offerings. His heart and soul belongs to Yossi.

Ten years later we find Yossi still acted by Ohad Knoller who is now a cardiologist in Tel Aviv hospital. He has become overweight, full of remorse and sadness and still living a closeted gay life. His friend and co worker another doctor played by Lior Ashkenazi another Eyton Fox regular pushes Yossi to go out on dates with women, and pressures him into going out to a straight bar with him, where Lior picks up two women and brings one of them into the men's toilet to have a three way with Yossi and him. . Yossi flees. Because of an error he makes in the operating room, Yossi is pressured to take a break and he goes on a holiday to rest and recover. On his way to his holiday on the Sinai coast, he meets four young soldiers who have missed their bus on their way to a resort in Eilat and gives them a lift to the resort, where he also decides to stay over. One of the soldiers Tom is a good looking out gay man much younger than Yossi stretches out his reach and sexual easiness to Yossi and the film ends with this outreach. I've seen both films several times, and are lasting favorites. I have purposely not gone into plot details for either film as this would take away your joy of discovery.

Works on Paper

 

Ira Joel Haber was born and lives in Brooklyn. He is a sculptor, painter, writer, book dealer, photographer and teacher. His work has been seen in numerous group shows both in the USA and Europe and he has had 9 one man shows including several retrospectives of his sculpture. His work is in the collections of The Whitney Museum Of American Art, New York University, The Guggenheim Museum, The Hirshhorn Museum,The Albright-Knox Art Gallery & The Allen Memorial Art Museum. Since 2006 His paintings, drawings, photographs and collages have been published in over 300 on line and print magazines. He has received three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, two Creative Artists Public Service Grant (CAPS) two Pollock-Krasner grants, two Adolph Gottlieb Foundation grants and, in 2010, he received a grant from Artists' Fellowship Inc. in 2017 & 2018 he received the Brooklyn Arts Council SU-CASA artist-in-residence grant.