Spawn of David Bowie

The director of the recent movie MOON is Duncan Jones, son of David Bowie.

How was Duncan’s directorial debut? It was a lovely homage to the genre of science fiction movies. I will leave it at that.

And no, there were no David Bowie songs in the movie.

Mayday Mayday (MAY)

Remember when Ferris Bueller said:

Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

Well, it’s true and that is pretty much what happened to May for me. I learned many things that have either been integrated or forgotten, but with June,  I begin anew!

So What if I Learned This From a Movie Trailer (04/29)

I saw a preview for the movie, Music Within, which is based on the true story of Richard Pimentel, the man who is credited with championed the Americans with Disabilities Act, into becoming law.

Here is summary of his life story as found on www.miltwright.com:

Richard Pimentel was pronounced dead at birth in the delivery room. In a miraculous turn of events, he lived. His mother, who had experienced three miscarriages before his birth, left him in an orphanage, unable to come to terms with his existence. After his father’s death, he was raised by his impoverished grandmother and deemed “retarded” by a school guidance counselor. He never spoke a word until age six.

After his mother abandoned him again for a new boyfriend, Richard was left homeless and roamed from friend’s homes to his father’s old workplace, a strip bar. He lived and slept in the dressing room. During these hard times, he managed to win two national high school speech championships and was offered a college scholarship by College Bowl founder, Dr. Ben Padrow. Richard arrived on campus only to hear Dr. Padrow tell him to come back when he had “something to say.”

Richard followed Dr. Padrow’s advice and quit school. Soon after he was drafted to Vietnam, where he survived a volunteer suicide mission and became an acknowledged war hero. During his brief celebration, a stray bomb exploded in his bunker and ravaged his hearing. Not only did Richard lose his hearing, he developed tinnitus, a constant ringing in the ears. The government dismissed his dreams of college and public speaking, insisting his fate was one of insanity and rage due to his condition.

Richard refused to accept this fate. He returned to college where he met Art Honneyman, “the smartest and funniest man he has ever known,” who just happened to have a severe case of cerebral palsy. No one could understand Art due to his wheezing, garbled speech—-except for Richard, who could hear Art’s true voice due to his hearing loss.

At 3 AM, in celebration of Art’s birthday, Art and Richard sat down in a local restaurant for a pancake breakfast. Their waitress threatened to call the police, deeming him the “ugliest, most disgusting thing” she had ever seen. They refused to leave and were arrested under the “Ugly Law,” a statute that prohibited public appearances of people who were “unsightly.” This injustice propelled Richard, with the help of Dr. Padrow and a host of friends, headlong into the nascent disability movement

Different but the Same (04/07)

Another random fact about the Oscars…

The nominees for best picture for this years Oscar ceremony were:

Milk

The Reader

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Slumdog Millionaire

Frost/Nixon

Now, look closely – can you notice what these movie titles have in common?

I will give you a hint, the last time the Best Picture nominees had the same thing in common was in 1964 when the following films were up for the Academy’s biggest award:

Mary Poppins

My Fair Lady

Becket

Zorba the Great

Dr. Strangelove

Still don’t have the answer?

Here it is: Each of the 10 titles above refer to the main character(s) in each of the films.

I thought that was interesting and so will any other movie nerd.

Watchmen (04/01)

The original title for the Alan Moore’s Watchmen was Who Killed the Peacemaker?

The reason being, before the Comedian was the Comedian – he was the Peacemaker.

Read what I read on Atomic Gadlfy’s blog:

THE PEACEMAKER

When writer Alan Moore pitched the idea for Watchmen to DC Comics, his working title was “Who Killed the Peacemaker?” By the time Watchmen saw publication, the character whose murder sets the events of the story in motion had been changed to an original creation of Moore and artist Dave Gibbons, the Comedian.

So who was the Peacemaker? He was Christopher Smith, a diplomat and avowed pacifist. However, unlike the pacifists I get into arguments with in bars, Smith understood that diplomacy sometimes fails, leaving you with no choice but to pick up a weapon and start shooting bad guys. And that’s exactly what he did, under the guise of the Peacemaker, “a man who loves peace so much that he is willing to fight for it!”

Read entire blog here.

Alfred Hitchcock (03/26)

Alfred Hitchcock was originally a draftsman/advertising designer for  a cable company, he then became interested in photography and broke  into the movie industry by designing the titles for silent movies.

It  only took 5 years from the time he started as a title designer to  become a film director.

Earworms (03/25)

No, I am not talking about the horrible scene in Star Trek: Wrath of Kahn. If you don’t know the scene I am talking about, consider yourself lucky.

I am talking about the term used to describe when you get a song stuck in your head.

Many people are set off by the theme music of a film or television show or advertisement. This is not coincidental, for such music is designed, in the terms of the music industry, to “hook” the listener, to be “catchy or “sticky” – to bore its, like an earwig, into the ear or mind; hence the term “earworms” -though one might be inclined to call them “brainworms” instead.

from Oliver Sacks, Musicophilia, p 45

Now the next time you get a song stuck in your head you can imagine it as a worm. You can thank me later.

Django Reinhardt (03/19)

I first heard of the musician Django Reinhart when I saw Woody Allen’s film Sweet and Lowdown. As you may recall, Sean Penn’s character Emmet Ray idolizes Django and if I recall correctly, passes out when he sees Django at a gas station.

Shortly after seeing the movie, I began listening to some of Reinhardt’s guitar solos. The music he makes is amazing and after you read what happened to him in 1928, you’ll be even more amazed.

On November 2nd, 1928 an event took place that would forever change Django’s life. At one o’clock in the morning the 18 year old Django returned from a night of playing music at a new club “La Java” to the caravan that was now the home of himself and his new wife. The caravan was filled with celluloid flowers his wife had made to sell at the market on the following day. Django upon hearing what he thought was a mouse among the flowers bent down with a candle to look. The wick from the candle fell into the highly flammable celluloid flowers and the caravan was almost instantly transformed into a raging inferno. Django wrapped himself in a blanket to shield him from the flames. Somehow he and his wife made it across the blazing room to safety outside, but his left hand, and his right side from knee to waist were badly burned.

Initially doctors wanted to amputate his leg but Django refused. He was moved to a nursing home where the care was so good his leg was saved. Django was bedridden for eighteen months. During this time he was given a guitar, and with great determination Django created a whole new fingering system built around the two fingers on his left hand that had full mobility. His fourth and fifth digits of the left hand were permanently curled towards the palm due to the tendons shrinking from the heat of the fire. He could use them on the first two strings of the guitar for chords and octaves but complete extension of these fingers was impossible. His soloing was all done with the index and middle fingers! Film clips of Django show his technique to be graceful and precise, almost defying belief.

Missing Something? (03/14)

Although he ranks alongside Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton as one of the most popular and influential film comedians of the silent film era – he was always less known to me – the man I am talking about is Harold Lloyd.

Harold Lloyd as his "Glasses Character"

Harold Lloyd was a brilliant comedian, superb athlete, and daredevil who did most of his own stunts even after a 1919 accident…

On a Sunday in August of 1919, Harold posed for a photographer. The set-up called for him to light a cigarette with a prop bomb — the round, black, type you might see in the cartoons. The bomb wasn’t a prop at all; it exploded in his hand. It ripped open the sixteen-foot ceiling and left Harold blind and with most of his right hand missing. Doctors told him he would never see again. His career was over.

But the doctors were wrong. Eventually, his sight did return, the scars healed, and a glove was crafted to hide his handicap from his public. The comedian, known for doing all his own daredevil stunts, felt his audience would be concerned for his safety and not laugh at the movie if they knew about his injury. So he wore the glove in every movie he ever made after the accident.

(from the official website of Harold Lloyd)

If have ever seen his 1923 movie Safety Last! you will find it hard to believe all of the stunts that he accomplished with a prosthetic hand.

Safety First!

The Night Watch by Rembrandt (03/10)

AKA: The Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq and Lieutenant Willem van Ruytenhurch

I was reading an article in Film Comment about Peter Greenaway’s film Rembrandt’s J’accuse,  an essayistic documentary in which Greenaway’s fierce criticism of today’s visual illiteracy is argued by means of a forensic search of Rembrandt’s Nightwatch.

I learned a few things about Peter Greenaway in reading the article, but what I also interested in this painting. I have taken a few Art History course and I was surprised when the article listed Nightwatch as the fourth most famous painting (after the Mona Lisa, The Last Supper and the Sistine Chaple, of course).

So I did some digging, first in my Gardner’s Art through the Ages (10th edition), and to my surpise it was not mentioned. Naturally, my next step was th internet where I found a site called Remrandtpainting.net from which the following bits are from.

The Night Watch was commissioned by Captain Barining Cocq and 17 members of his civic guards; that this was the total of Rembrandt’s clients for the work is assumed from the fact that 18 names, added by an unknown hand after the painting was completed, appear on a shield on the background wall.

The Night Watch is colossal. In its original dimensions it measured approximately 13 by 16 feet.

The Night Watch lies at the center of the most persistent and annoying of all Rembrandt myths. As recently as the tourist season of 1967, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines featured the painting by their illustrious countryman in an advertisement inviting travelers to visit Holland. “See Night Watch,” said the advertisement, “Rembrandt’s spectacular ‘failure’ (that caused him to be) hooted …down the road to bankruptcy.”

The painting was not poorly received; no critic during Rembrandt’s lifetime wrote a word in dispraise of it. Captain Banning Cocq himself had a watercolor made of it for his personal album, and a contemporary oil copy of it by Gerrit Lundens, now owned by the National Gallery in London, offers further proof of the picture’ s popularity.

The fable of the Night Watch may owe its stubborn survival to the fact that it is a simple and convenient means of disposing of a complex matter. In 1642 Rembrandt was at the height of his popularity, and thereafter he slowly fell out of public favor, though never to the extent that romantic biographers suggest. What were the reasons for his “decline”? One of them, certainly, was a change in Dutch tastes in art.

Well, I know this – if you asked Peter Greenaway about the “fable of the Night Watch“, he would certainly tell you that Rembrandt’s fall out of public favor had nothing to do with “a change in tastes in art”.