Category Archives: 1001 things to do before you die

World music classics #11

Marquee Moon (1977) – Television

I was 16 or 17. D____ gave me this record. He didn’t like it or didn’t know what to make of it. To the last of knowledge, he lives on the Canary Islands. I don’t know where he got the record from. I no longer have this album. The World Dance Music classics category has been renamed to World Music Classics.

Marquee Moon is New York Television‘s post-punk outfit 1977 debut album. Television originally wanted to record Marquee Moon with veteran jazz recording engineer Rudy Van Gelder (John Coltrane‘s A Love Supreme, most of the classic Blue Note Records catalog) at his legendary recording studio. The album cover features a portrait of the band taken by Robert Mapplethorpe, who also took the cover of fellow CBGB rocker Patti Smith‘s Horses album. A cover version of the title track was recorded in 1990 by the Kronos Quartet for the compilation album Rubáiyát. The song “Marquee Moon” was done in one take; drummer Billy Ficca thought that they were rehearsing.

See previous entries in this series.

Icons of erotic art #4

Pornokrates (1879) – Félicien Rops

Few things are sexier than a blindfolded woman. I was 20 or 21, I was in Brussels with Ilse and her friends. We were — I think — in the Agora galleries. Suddenly I spotted this painting on a poster on a shop door. I was stunned. The blindfold, the stockings, the shoes, the pig, the gloves. As I mentioned in my previous post, few works of erotic art can be used for masturbatory purposes. Neither can this painting, but its theatricality sets a mood, engenders expectations and hints at hidden desires. Painted 128 years ago, this work set standards which few other paintings will transgress.

Rops in a letter to a friend:

“My Pornocratie is complete. This drawing delights me. I would like to show you this beautiful naked girl, clad only in black shoes and gloves in silk, leather and velvet, her hair styled. Wearing a blindfold she walks on a marble stage, guided by a pig with a “golden tail” across a blue sky. Three loves – ancient loves – vanish in tears (…) I did this in four days in a room of blue satin, in an overheated apartment, full of different smells, where the opopanax and cyclamen gave me a slight fever conducive towards production or even towards reproduction”. –Letter from Rops to Henri Liesse, 1879.

Previous entries here, and in a Wiki format here.

Icons of erotic art #3

There are those works of erotica — although very few, otherwise they would be classified as pornography — which are erotic, meaning arousing, and those which are not. Our third entry in this series belongs to the second category. Although not erotic, it does provide a certain a shiver, or frisson, as the French would say. I am talking about The Rape [1] (1934) by Magritte, one of the more Sadean artists of French surrealism. The painting depicts a faceless woman –her face is replaced by her torso. She is mute, her mouth replaced by her pubic hair. The painting [2] was also used for the cover of André Breton‘s pamphlet What is Surrealism?.

Digression #1: Please let me remind you of the fabulous blog lemateurdart.

Digression #2: Speaking of rape, below is a very powerful painting by Degas, titled Interior (The Rape):

Degas The Rape

Previous entries here, and in a Wiki format here.

World cinema classics #24

Steve + Sky

Steve + Sky (2004) – Felix van Groeningen

Steve+Sky (2004) is a Flemish film by director and screenwriter Felix van Groeningen (Dagen zonder lief). To the right of the screen capture is Titus De Voogdt, to the left the Delfine Bafort, the Belgian model/actress who recently starred in Looking for Alfred by Johan Grimonprez. The film was produced by Dirk Impens, best known for Daens, currently working on an adaptation of Dimitri Verhulst’s novel De Helaasheid der Dingen.

The film is situated in a Ghent “route nationale” red light district (locally and euphemistically known as “De Warme Landen”, literally the “warm countries”), and beautifully photographed by Ruben Impens who treats this Belgian vernacular architecture with a gloss of 1980s nostalgia.

The petty criminal Steve (Titus De Voogdt) is released from jail and looks up his ex cell mate Jean-Claude (Johan Heldenbergh) in the latter’s strip club. There he meets the intriguing Sky (Delfine Bafort). They start a passionate but impossible love affair in a story reminiscent of Betty Blue and the American production Buffalo ’66.

The soundtrack was compiled by Soulwax who chose “De meeste dromen zijn bedrog” by Marco Borsato, the cult hit “Putain Putain” by TC Matic, Reese‘s “To the Rock (to the Beat)” and “Beats of love” by Nacht und Nebel for the clubbish post-punk/New Beat atmosphere of the film.

The film editor is Nico Leunen, who learned the trade from Ludo Troch.

The film is noted for its naturalism with dialogues such as “A hole is a hole and a dick has no eyes.” (Jean-Claude) and a hilarious dispute between Jean-Claude and his pubescent daughter in which she asks him for money. When she gets the money he says: “Thank you, daddy!” and she replies “Thank you, asshole!”

Jan Sulmont at Kutsite.com has a fine review.

Previous “World Cinema Classics” and in the Wiki format here.

Free Radicals

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaYi6FlB4cw]

Scrub to 3:30 for immediate access to Free Radicals (an instant dance music classic)

The phrase “free radical” got stuck in my head, and Googling for it brought up a 1958 film by New Zealand experimental filmmaker Len Lye, titled Free Radicals. The film features white ‘chalk’ lines constantly moving on a black background with African drums (‘a field tape of the Bagirmi tribe’) playing throughout. The film won second prize out of 400 entries in an International Experimental Film Competition judged by Man Ray, Norman McLaren, Alexander Alexeieff and others, at the 1958 World’s Fair in Brussels. In 1979 Lye further condensed this already very concentrated film by dropping a minute of footage. Stan Brakhage described the final version as “an almost unbelievably immense masterpiece (a brief epic)’. I could not agree more.

World cinema classics #23

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Md-LwM0s9fY]

Daisies (1966) – Věra Chytilová

It was against my rules to include films in this series that I had not seen. However, on the basis of this superb excerpt and some very warm recommendations of fellow bloggers, here is Daisies, a 1966 Czech film by director Věra Chytilová. It’s included in Film as a Subversive Art.

If everything’s going bad … so … we’re going … bad … as … well!

Previous “World Cinema Classics” and in the Wiki format here.

World cinema classics #22

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stth1IlAMk8]

Je t’aime… moi non plus (1976) – Serge Gainsbourg

I’m not sure Je t’aime… moi non plus would work if it was made today. I saw at the local art house cinema in my mid twenties. At the time I was as much in love with the yellow truck as with the decadence of the film, the performances of Jane Birkin, and Joe Dallesandro and the cameo by Gérard Depardieu. As a fan of Serge Gainsbourg, I’m glad to showcase it here today. The striptease scene at the beginning is very typical of this film. Towards the end of this Youtube clip, the footage is underlit.

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World cinema classics #21

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eqXWUie-Og]

Blood of the Beasts (1949) – Georges Franju (If embedded play does not work click here.)

My series “world cinema classics” is usually dedicated to fictional feature films. This film is short, and documentary, but nevertheless, the poetic qualities of the French language original give an air of uncanny fictionality which made me consider it for the series. An excellent film if hard on the stomach.

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