Dying Cleopatra (1872) by Arnold Böcklin, see death of Cleopatra
- To the elements it came from
- Everything will return.
- Our bodies to earth,
- Our blood to water,
- Heat to fire,
- Breath to air. —Matthew Arnold‘s Empedocles on Etna
Season’s greetings
What had started with the reminiscences of a perfectly Breillatian romantic dream …
… ended in Houellebecquian confusion.
RIP Charles H. Schneer 1920-2009
RIP Charles H. Schneer, 88, American film producer
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yYeZMx1Y7U]
skeleton scene in Jason and the Argonauts
Charles H. Schneer (1920 – January 21, 2009) was a film producer most widely known for working with special effects pioneer, Ray Harryhausen, best-known for producing films such as The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad and Jason and the Argonauts.
The sequence in which seven animated skeletons (see above) rise from the earth and attack Jason and his comrades is widely considered to be among the greatest achievements of motion picture special effects.
John Belushi @60
John Belushi, American actor (1949 – 1982)
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VstaFz_ZPg&]
A Youtube tribute to Belushi set to the Ramones “My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down (Bonzo Goes to Bitburg)“.
John Belushi would have celebrated his 60th birthday today, had he not died from a drug overdose in 1982, aged only 33.
John Adam Belushi (1949 – 1982) was an American comedian, actor and musician, notable for his work on Saturday Night Live, National Lampoon’s Animal House, and The Blues Brothers.
Happy birthday Sonny Chiba
Sonny Chiba, Japanese actor and martial artist celebrates his 70th birthday today.
Sonny Chiba was brought to the attention of mainstream international audiences by Quentin Tarantino. Before that, he was known to the martial arts film crowd for his film The Street Fighter.
I am fascinated by street fights, so were the Rolling Stones and the track “Street Fighting Man” is considered by many their most political track. I suppose in a Debordian way.
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LYT4JC2dd4]
Opening credits of Karate Kiba
Sonny Chiba is connected to the pseudo-biblical passage “Ezekiel 25:17” by way of Pulp Fiction.
- “The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who in the name of charity and goodwill shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.”
Tarantino had borrowed this text from Chiba’s Karate Kiba.
As to me, for martial artist I prefer Bruce Lee as I’ve seen him in The Tenant and my Chiba as “Cheeba Cheeba”.
Introducing Elem Klimov’s Agony
Only at times like this, when viewing clips of what looks to be an exceptional film, Elem Klimov‘s Agony about the life of Rasputin, see previous post[1], discovered via one of my new facebook friendships, do we realize what utter tripe we are usually watching. The score by Alfred Schnittke is half of the attraction of this film.
Rasputin’s member and Strindberg’s women
Tomorrow Thursday 22nd is Grigori Rasputin‘s and August Strindberg‘s anniversary. Rasputin is then at 140, Strindberg at 160.
Edel‘s Rasputin: Dark Servant of Destiny (1995)
Rasputin is known today for the sensationalized accounts as playboy, mystical healer, debauched religious charlatan and political demiurge. Accounts of his life have often been based on dubious memoirs, hearsay, and legend, such as the story of his most honest organ.
Rasputin’s member, fact or fiction?
Strindberg is known for his misogyny (Strindberg’s misogyny), his interest in oneirism and the unconsciousness (A Dream Play and a chronology of the discovery of the unconscious in the 19th century) and as a founding father of literary realism.
CLIP DELETED
Mike Figgis‘s Miss Julie, the”And now kiss my shoe”-scene
Your best introduction to the life of Strindberg is his autobiographical novel Inferno. Written in French in 1897 at the height of Strindberg’s troubles with both censors and women, the book is concerned with Strindberg’s life both in and after he lived in Paris, and explores his various obsessions, including alchemy, occultism, and Swedenborgianism, and showing signs of paranoia and neuroticism.
Inferno has often been cited as proof of Strindberg’s own personal neuroses, such as a persecution complex, but evidence also suggests that Strindberg, although experiencing mild neurotic symptoms, both invented and exaggerated much of the material in the book for dramatic effect.
Happy birthday Radley Metzger!
Unidentified photo of Radley Metzger
Radley Metzger, American filmmaker, distributor and producer turns 80 today.
If all roads lead to Rome, Metzger‘s birthday leads to The Image, one of the sexiest films of the 1970s.
She lifts her skirt for her mistress.
The Image / The Punishment of Anne (1975) – Radley Metzger [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
The Image is a 1975 film directed by Radley Metzger. The film is based upon the 1956 French novel L’Image, written by Catherine Robbe-Grillet, wife of Alain Robbe-Grillet.
The story of Jean (played by Carl Parker), a writer who meets an old friend, Claire (Marilyn Roberts), at a party and is soon drawn into her world of sadomasochism along with her slave, Anne (Mary Mendum, aka Rebecca Brooke, and Metzger’s girlfriend at the time).
Watch out for the fountain scene if you ever get to see this gem, it makes very clever Freudian use of a free Parisian spectacle.
The film is World Cinema Classic #80.
Introducing Paula Modersohn-Becker
While researching Aktivismus (in relationship to my Gaston Burssens binge[1]), I came across the powerful work of German female painter Paula Modersohn-Becker.
Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876 – 1907) is considered a representative of early expressionism.
She produced nude self-portraits of which the two depicted are perhaps examples. I’m too tired to check.
The one painting with the baby is particularly foretelling. When Paula’s long-lived wish to conceive and bear a child was fulfilled, her daughter Mathilde (Tillie) Modersohn was born but the joy became soon overshadowed by tragedy, as Paula Modersohn-Becker died suddenly in Worpswede on November 20th from an embolism.
Since she died young, she is one of the few 20th century artists whose work is in the public domain.
I am a romantic at heart. Of the dark variety.
I am a romantic at heart. Of the dark variety.
I recently purchased The Romantic Image[1] by Frank Kermode. It mentions Simeon Solomon as the garret-living bohemian/starving artist/einzelganger.
I quote:
I research Simeon Solomon and find W. H. Auden‘s For The Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio, which has the scene, “The Meditation of Simeon,” which begins:
- “As long as there were any roads to amnesia and anaesthesia still to be explored, any rare wine or curiosity of cuisine as yet untested, any erotic variation as yet unimagined or unrealized, any method of torture as yet undevised, any style of conspicuous waste as yet unindulged, any eccentricity of mania or disease as yet unrepresented, there was still hope that man had not been poisoned but transformed….”
What Auden describes is jadedness, the primary malady of all romantics.