Frans Zwartjes was a Dutch artist and filmmaker.
Tag Archives: RIP
RIP Ghédalia Tazartès (1947 – 2021)
Ghédalia Tazartès was a French musician known for his guttural singing.
He is on the famous Nurse with Wound list.
RIP Chick Corea (1941 – 2021)
Chick Corea was a legendary American composer working in jazz, mainly playing keyboards.
He is a celebrated name in jazz fusion, but he never actively appeared on my radar.
So, I give you “Was Dog a Doughnut?” (1977) by Cat Stevens on which Chick plays keyboards. This did came to my attention in the period when I was researching late 20th century nightclub music.
RIP Larry Flynt (1942 – 2021)
Larry Flynt was the publisher of American pornographic magazine Hustler, founded in 1974 in the slipstream of the sexual revolution.
I show you an interview from 2014.
In the opening splash you see — at the right hand side — the controversial cover of a woman who is fed to a meat grinder.
Flynt was a rebel. Many pornographers were. That’s what used to make pornography so interesting during the early modern period up until the sexual revolution.
RIP Jean-Claude Carrière (1931 – 2021)
Jean-Claude Carrière was a French novelist and screenwriter famous for scripting The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, The Phantom of Liberty and The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
I give you the toilet scene from The Phantom of Liberty, it makes you wonder if Buñuel scripted it alone or he asked Carrièret to assist him.
RIP Christopher Plummer (1929 – 2021)
Christopher Plummer was a Canadian actor best-known for his part in The Sound of Music.
In my universe, Plummer played parts in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, The Man Who Would Be King and Harrison Bergeron, an admirable adaptation of the wonderful short story by Vonnegut.
In Harrison Bergeron, Plummer is John Klaxon. Klaxon is the benevolent tyrant of the intelligent elite that gives the masses the illusion that they rule.
There seem to be quite a lot of differences with the short story, but I have not had time to check them out.
Update: I re-read the short story, which is only 6 to 7 pages long so there is barely opportunity to compare. In the short story the parents of Harrison are watching television, their son having been arrested some time before. The parents are watching television. All of a sudden the son is seen on television interrupting a ballet performance. The son speaks to the people, imploring them to free themselves from their handicaps. He ‘marries’ a ballerina and is subsequently and tragically shot.
The 2009 short film 2081 follows the short story faithfully.
The film version, with Harrison becoming part of the elite, is reminiscent of V for Vendetta, one of the best films of the 21st century.
RIP Sophie (1986 – 2021)
Sophie was a Scottish singer-songwriter and record producer.
She is known for such songs as “It’s Okay to Cry” (2017).
RIP Hilton Valentine (1943 – 2021)
Hilton Valentine was an English guitarist, member of the The Animals.
Valentine played the electric guitar arpeggio introduction to the Animals’ 1964 signature song “The House of the Rising Sun”.
RIP Arik Brauer (1929 – 2021)
Arik Brauer was an Austrian artist, co-founder of the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism.
The work of Brauer strikes me as uninteresting.
Maybe I’m too harsh on this whole school of Vienna, but the only artist of that school who really impresses me is Johfra Bosschart.
RIP Alberto Grimaldi (1925 – 2021)
Alberto Grimaldi was an Italian film producer known for producing The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Last Tango in Paris, but more importantly for us, Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom by Pasolini.
That Sodom film you don’t need to see to form an opinion about. It’s better just to read about it and let it lead you to the manuscript by Sade on which it was based.
That book has the lines:
“How many times, damn it, have I not desired that one could attack the sun, deprive the universe of it, or use it to set fire to the world”.
But I digress.