RIP Wouter Barendrecht (1965 – 2009)
The Goddess of 1967 (2000)
Wouter Barendrecht, Dutch film producer died of a heart failure. He was 43. He produced the stylish The Goddess of 1967 (2000), van Warmerdam‘s excellent Grimm (2003) and Waiter (2006) and Gregg Araki‘s queer Mysterious Skin (2004).
Related articles In search of the cinematic Losfeld, The Big Six of Hollywood
Celluloid @140
Celluloid Capers
On this day April 6, 1869, celluloid is patented. Since then, celluloid has become metonymical with cinema. The word can also be found in the title of the French/American record label Celluloid Records and in the title of the Anglophone gay film book The Celluloid Closet.
Celluloid Capers was a sex film magazine à la Cinesex, Sex Stars System and Continental Film Review.
Nude (c.1930) by Jean Marembert [source]
Au carrefour étrange uncovered a 1947 edition of Petrus Borel‘s Champavert [1] and presents us with the exceptional work of Jean Marembert.
Jean Marembert (1904–1968) was a French artist who is tangentially connected to such people as Louis Cattiaux, Jean Crotti, Suzanne Valadon, Kees Van Dongen, Paul Colin, Moise Kisling, Man Ray, Leonor Fini and Labisse. He exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants and the Salon des Tuileries. His biography can be found in the 2004 book on figurative painting, Modern Figurative Paintings: The Paris Connection. Modern Figurative Paintings: The Paris Connection (2004) is a book by Martin Wolpert and Jeffrey Winter on modern figurative painting.
Modern Figurative Painters (2004) [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
From the blurb of Modern Figurative Paintings: The Paris Connection:
Artists in this book include Jean Crotti , Grigory Gluckmann, Louis Icart, Louis Legrand, André Lhote, Jean Marembert and Marie Vassilieff.
Heath Andrew Ledger (4 April 1979–22 January 2008) was an Australian actor who died young by committing suicide. He was only 28.
People do not die in this universe. Did James Dean die? Or Marilyn Monroe? They have become part of modern mythology. Watch the unusual Western Brokeback Mountain (2005). It is World Cinema Classic #91.
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xuugq7fito]
Hugh Masekela @70
Hugh Masekela (April 4, 1939) is a South African musician known for such songs as “Grazing in the Grass” and the discotheque hit “Don’t Go Lose It Baby“. He was married to Miriam Makeba[1].
He was one of several African musicians to introduce African music in the west in the 1960s which has been a major factor in the shaping Western popular music.
Always a musical chameleon, Masekela has been classified as Afrobeat, jazz fusion, jazz funk, soul jazz; he even produced an album with drum machines, appropriately titled Techno Bush.
Dearest Jan,
The current state of cult film historiography is perhaps best exemplified by the book Cinema of Obsession. It’s just a pity that it’s rather clumsily written. This could have been a great book in the hands of Greil Marcus or David Toop. Excellent is its selection of films and its four tier ontology, of which three are useful: the male gaze, the female gaze, the fugitive couple. The category titled romantic implosion is rather enigmatic.
Its main merit lies in the thematic literary criticism, as it provides a useful contribution to the notion amour fou, mad love, sexual obsession, obsessive love and the war of the sexes.
Yours
Marvin Gaye @70
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVTN5o9Kgu8]
Marvin Gaye (April 2 1939 – April 1 1984) was an African-American singer, songwriter, composer, multi-instrumentalist, and record producer who gained international fame as an artist on the Motown record label in the 1960s and 1970s. He is best-known for “Sexual Healing,” a 1982 song and the first hit record to use the Roland TR-8081 for bass.
The lyrics of ‘Sexual Healing” song discussed a man’s aching for finding sexual healing with his woman – hence the title “Sexual Healing“. According to David Ritz, when he interviewed Gaye for an autobiography, he noticed comic book pornography in Marvin’s room and mentioned to the singer that he “needed sexual healing” causing Gaye and Ritz to write the lyrics.
1 The famous Roland TR-808 was launched in 1980. At the time it was regarded with little fanfare, as it did not have digitally sampled sounds; drum machines using digital samples were much more popular. In time though, the TR-808, along with its successor, TR-909 (released in 1983), would soon become a fixture of the burgeoning underground dance, techno, and hip hop genres, mainly because of its low cost (relative to that of the Linn machines), and the unique character of its analogue-generated sounds. The TR-808’s sound only became truly desirable in the late 1980s, about five years after the model was discontinued and had become cheaply available on the second hand market.Nikolai Gogol @200
Poprishchin, protagonist of Nikolai Gogol‘s “Diary of a Madman” painted by Ilya Repin
Nikolai Gogol will be 200 tomorrow morning (that’s the day after tomorrow, I skipped a day here). Like so many of us of the internet generation, we stumbled upon Gogol via Mario Bava’s Black Sunday.
He is an icon of 19th century literature, Russian literature, grotesque literature and fantastic literature.
“What an intelligent, queer, and sick creature!” —Ivan Turgenev
“I don’t know whether anyone liked Gogol exclusively as a human being. I don’t think so; it was, in fact, impossible. How can you love one whose body and spirit are recovering from self-inflicted torture?” —Sergei Aksakov
Gogol wrote in the literary tradition of E.T.A. Hoffmann (The Sandman) and Laurence Sterne (Tristram Shandy), often involving elements of the fantastic and grotesque. In addition, Gogol’s works are often outrageously funny. The mix of humor, social realism, the fantastic, and unusual prose forms are what readers love about his work.
Gil Scott-Heron @60
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_b2F-XX0Ol0]
Gil Scott-Heron (born April 1 1949) is an American poet and musician known primarily for his late 1960s and early 1970s work as a spoken word performer. He is associated with African American militant activism, and is best known for his songs “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” and “The Bottle” (see above).
The Vampyre @200
On the cover Fuseli‘s The Nightmare
“The Vampyre” is a short story written by John William Polidori and is a progenitor of the romantic vampire genre of fantasy fiction.
“The Vampyre” was first published on April 1, 1819, by Colburn in the New Monthly Magazine with the false attribution “A Tale by Lord Byron.” The name of the work’s protagonist, “Lord Ruthven“, added to this assumption, for that name was originally used in Lady Caroline Lamb‘s novel Glenarvon, in which a thinly-disguised Byron figure was also named Lord Ruthven. Despite repeated denials by Byron and Polidori, the authorship often went unclarified.
The story was an immediate popular success, partly because of the Byron attribution and partly because it exploited the gothic horror predilections of the public. Polidori transformed the vampire from a character in folklore into the form we recognize today – an aristocratic fiend who preys among high society.