Something for the weekend

Bouquet de mimosas




Works by the French naïve painter Séraphine Louis (1864-1942), known as Séraphine de Senlis, set to Brian Eno and Harold Budd's Lost in the Humming Air.




Fleurs





Séraphine (2008)

Something for the weekend

Chumlum, 1963-64 by Ron Rice
© Light Cone


Invocations and Evocations: Queer and Surreal

Friday 26 March – Monday 29 March 2010

Featuring the first public screening of Derek Jarman’s long lost and recently rediscovered first film, Electric Fairy (1971), this special series at Tate Modern will provide a form of invocation where the tangled threads of surrealism and queer experimental cinema, exemplified by Jarman, Kenneth Anger, Joseph Cornell, George Kuchar, Marie Menken and many others, will be reflected from the projector’s blinding beam.
Surrealism began as a brotherhood experimenting with trance states, games of chance and research into the world of the marvellous. One of their games was the act of invocation – calling forth forgotten or buried figures: famous or notorious. Although the surrealists’ social politics initially included a virulent strain of homophobia, the thread woven by André Breton and his peers can be followed into the labyrinth of queer practice throughout the twentieth century and beyond.
Curated by James Boaden, Stuart Comer, Ed Halter, Jonathan Katz and Juan A. Suárez.


Two of the films included in the programme available on DVD:






Avery Danziger's Edward James: Builder of Dreams (1995)










James Bidgood's (a fact not widely known until the mid-90s) cult classic Pink Narcissus (1971)


Marvellous.


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Now playing: Peter Murphy - Indigo Eyes
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Something for the weekend

Neil Jordan's Breakfast on Pluto comes tearing out of the gate like a pink poodle on speed. Rattling through chapters from Patrick McCabe's novel - all 36 of them, individually captioned - it relates the picaresque adventures of a young Irish transvestite called Kitten (Cillian Murphy), taking us from his rural Irish childhood, dumped on the doorstep of the parish priest (Liam Neeson), to his quest for his mother (Eva Birthistle) between bombings and cabaret shows in glam 1970s London. - Tim Robey





I love talking about nothing. It is the only thing I know anything about. - Oscar Wilde


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Now playing: Dusty Springfield - The Windmills of Your Mind
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Aide-memoire

La mémoire du rhinocéros, 1980 by François-Xavier Lalanne



Life is all memory. - Flora Sissy Goforth


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Now playing: Hideaway - Georgie Fame
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Something for the weekend

Die Mommie Die! (2003)

Written by and starring Charles Busch as Angela Arden. Angela is an unhappily married cabaret singer trying to make a comeback. And she is not going to let anyone stand in her way.

Angela Arden: I hate this house! I hate these walls... I hate that sofa! The only part of this dump that doesn't make me puke is that door - because that's the way I'm gettin' out!





You've slipped into my life as easily as vermouth into a glass of gin... quickly and just a bit too smooth.


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Now playing: Frank Sinatra - The Lady is a Tramp
via FoxyTunes

Last of the French New Wave

Le Rayon vert, the 1986 film by Éric Rohmer


Ah, for the days - that set our hearts ablaze


Éric Rohmer (1920-2010)

Looking forward to...

seeing,





Precious



and reading,



Mia Mask's Divas on Screen - Black Women in American Film


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Now playing: Mary J. Blige - No more drama
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From the sublime to the serious, via the ridiculous

The sublime -



Luis Barragan's Los Clubes (Mexico City, Mexico)


The ridiculous -



John Waters's Pink Flamingos (1972)



The serious -

National Breast Cancer Awareness Month via Mrs. Blandings.

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Now playing: Thelma Houston - Don't Leave Me This Way
via FoxyTunes

Chatelaine

Flora Sissy Goforth is our mystery chatelaine.

Played to the absolute hilt by Elizabeth Taylor in Tennessee Williams's film adaptation of his play The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore (1963) entitled Boom! (1968). Appearing along side Miss Taylor are Richard Burton, Noel Coward (pictured above in his role as the Witch of Capri), and Joanna Shimkus.

The ravishing sets were created by the very talented Richard MacDonald, who had also previously worked with the film's director Joseph Losey.




While not generally well received in its own time, perhaps Boom!'s time has finally come. Perhaps this time as an opera.



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Now playing: Killing Joke - Requiem
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I, Quentin

Quentin Crisp: A Film By Denis Mitchell (1968)

Made in 1968 after Crisp's initial success with The Naked Civil Servant and broadcast in 1970 as part of Granada TV's World In Action series. It was this exposure that led to The Naked Civil Servant being made into a film.


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Now playing: Sting - Englishman In New York
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More ways to waste time

Love! Valour! Compassion! (1997)

The film adaptation of Terrence McNally's Tony Award winning play, with Jason Alexander (Buzz Hauser), Randy Becker (Ramon Fornos), Stephen Bogardus (Gregory Mitchell), John Glover (John and James Jeckyll), John Benjamin Hickey (Arthur Pape), Justin Kirk (Bobby Brahms) and Stephen Spinella (Perry Sellars).


Gregory -

I love my house.



Everybody does.



It was built in 1895



and still has most
of the original roof.



The wallpaper in the dining room
is original, too.



So is a lot of the woodwork.



You'd have to be a fool
to change it.



I hope you appreciate detail.



The marble fireplace
is hand-carved.



The main stairs have
a very gentle rise.



Everyone comments how easy
it is to climb them.



I like to fill it with my friends.



Over the years,
we've become more like a family.



It makes me happy to have us
all together in our home.



Mine and Bobby's.



They don't build houses
like this anymore.



The golden age
of American house building.



Not architecture, mind you,



but house building.



This house
was meant to stand.



Welcome.


Make yourself at home.








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Now playing: Mungo Jerry - In The Summertime
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More ways to waste time

Shirley MacLaine and Michael Caine in the 1966 crime caper Gambit.

Love this film. MacLaine is exquisite to behold and Caine is roguishly charming.

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Now playing: David Bowie - China Girl
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More ways to waste time

The World of Suzie Wong (1960)

Based on the 1957 novel written by Richard Mason and its subsequent stage production. Starring William Holden, Nancy Kwan, Sylvia Syms, Michael Wilding, and Jacqui Chan.

Robert Lomax (Holden) is an American architect pushing forty who moves to Hong Kong to pursue his dream of being a painter. En route he meets bargirl Suzie Wong's (Kwan) alter ego Mee Ling, her father a very rich man and she's not dirty street girl, on board the Star Ferry. It is through this chance meeting that the rest of the story unfolds.








Nancy Kwan on the cover of Life on October 24, 1960



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Now playing: Sarah Vaughan - I'm in the Mood for Love
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More ways to waste time

Apartment Zero (1988), starring Hart Bochner and Colin Firth, with Dora Bryan, Liz Smith, and Fabrizio Bentivoglio.

Stylish thriller, set in modern day Buenos Aires, that centres around the relationship between Adrian LeDuc (Firth) and his lodger Jack Carney (Bochner). Adrian, a repressed and unbalanced loner, becomes emotionally dependent on the beguiling Jack, who in turn is a (hot, which is key) mercenary sociopath.


Jack, there is only one rule here and that is avoid the neighbours... They have been trying to find a way into me like dirty little worms...Not because they care, not because they like me, it's just to satisfy their morbid pointless curiosity...





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Now playing: Wham! - Bad Boys
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Ingenious

Following the right hand of Sophia Loren in "Too Bad She's Bad"

For his ongoing series, Following the right hand, Pierre Bismuth does just that. He projects a feature film onto a sheet of Plexiglas and painstakingly follows the movements of the lead actress’ right hand with a black marker. The resultant abstract drawings are then enframed over a 30 by 40 inch photographic print of a still image from the film. The image selected by the artist represents the moment that he disengages from the actress, sometimes near the beginning of the film, creating a simple drawing; but just as often near the end of the film, creating an aggressive thicket of marks that almost obliterate the filmic image. In this way, the motion picture is occluded by a chance pattern that constitutes a kind of messy signature made by the actress. There is an undeniably fetishistic aspect of this work, as a portion of its appeal is linked to the actress’s name and aura; at the same time, the focus on the squiggly marks paradoxically negates the film, along with its star, by obscuring them with black ink, frustrating our desire to connect with the screened image. - team ( gallery, inc.)



Following the right hand of Marilyn Monroe in "How to Marry a Millionaire"


Found via the comment left by Paul Pincus on An Aesthete's Lament.

Brilliant.

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Now playing on iTunes: Duran Duran - Girls on Film
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More ways to waste time

Recordaras, sung by Luz Casal, from Pedro Almodóvar's High Heels (1991). Again, another film built around the fractured relationship between a mother and her daughter. Not unlike Autumn Sonata, a previous More ways to waste time entry (and the reason I am convinced I never needed to see a shrink), which is directly quoted.

More ways to waste time

Sudden Fear (1952)

Sudden Fear (1952), the four time Academy Award nominated stylish film noir thriller starring Joan Crawford and Jack Palance. Featuring Gloria Grahame, Bruce Bennett, Virginia Huston, and Touch Connors. Shot on location in San Francisco.

Kiss me, kiss me hard.



The scenario...is designed to allow Miss Crawford a wide range of quivering reactions to vicious events, as she passes through the stage of starry-eyed love, terrible disillusionment, fear, hatred, and finally hysteria. With her wide eyes and forceful bearing, she is the woman for the job. - Otis L. Guernsey, Jr., New York Herald Tribune (1952)

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Now playing on iTunes: Nancy Sinatra - Lies
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More ways to waste time

A Stolen Life




A Stolen Life (1946)

Twin sisters Kate and Patricia Bosworth (Bette Davis) fall in love with the same man, Martha's Vineyard lighthouse inspector Bill Emerson (Glenn Ford). Patricia steals Bill away from Kate. Heartbroken, Kate returns to her painting. Bill, now unhappily wed, goes to Chile. While he is away, Kate and Patricia go sailing. Patricia is washed overboard leaving behind only her wedding ring. The boat capsizes. When Kate recovers consciousness she (believed to be Patricia because of said ring) is told that Bill is returning from Chile.

A precursor to the darker Dead Ringer (1964).

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Now playing on iTunes: Meredith Brooks - Bitch
via FoxyTunes

More ways to waste time

Tales of the City, More Tales of the City, and Further Tales of the City.

Brian may be wasted, but he makes perfect sense.



1960s Mai Tai menu.

A la Frannie Halcyon, mix with a picher of Mai Tais and add best friend.

Trader Vic's Original Mai Tai recipe -
2 ounces of 17-year old J. Wray & Nephew Rum over shaved ice.
Add juice from one fresh lime.
1/2 ounce Holland DeKuyper Orange Curacao.
1/4 ounce Trader Vic's Rock Candy Syrup.
1/2 ounce French Garier Orgeat Syrup
Shake vigorously.
Add a sprig of fresh mint


My version -
Large pitcher
Ice
Equal parts light and dark rum (both Old Oak)
Lime juice
Orange juice (Tropicana smooth)
Pineapple juice
Splash of grenadine


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Now playing on iTunes: Patti LaBelle - Lady Marmalade
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More ways to waste time

A Matter of Time (1976)
Based on Maurice Druon's novel The Film of Memory.
Directed by Vincente Minnelli. Featuring Ingrid Bergman, Liza Minnelli, Charles Boyer, Isabella Rossellini, Tina Aumont , and Fernando Rey.

Nina (Liza Minnelli) is a popular film star who, in the midst of a press conference, finds herself remembering her life before her big break, when she worked as a chambermaid at an Italian hotel which had seen better days. In the course of her duties, Nina meets Contessa Sanziani (Ingrid Bergman), an aging and eccentric woman who regales Nina with tales of her glamorous younger days. As the Contessa tells her more stories of her days of wealth and adventure, Nina imagines herself living out the same exciting stories, and soon the Contessa encourages her to find the courage to live out her own dreams.

Druon's character of the Contessa Sanziani was inspired by the real-life Marchesa Luisa Casati, who famously said I want to be a living work of art.



A German dubbed clip of the press confrence scene with Nina (Liza Minnelli).


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Now playing on iTunes: Diana Krall - Do It Again
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