St. Louis photoblog. Had a brief but beautiful and fun visit to St.Louis this weekend. I have photos to share of this city I love.
Hope you enjoy them!
Sunday, October 31, 2021
Florida, Oddly Enough -- Dorothy Dolores
Saturday, October 30, 2021
Creatures of the Night - Esther
It’s almost Hallowe’en & the great thing about Hallowe’en here is it feels just the way it should: the atmosphere, the climate, the very early dark evenings are all in place. There’s a cold calculation to it. Nature will not protect you & cannot bring you comfort. Nature is too busy looking after itself, preparing for its hibernation, not knowing whether it will see another spring.
We had a noon fly stuck in the flat the other night. It was quite possibly on its last legs, blindly throwing itself around the room. Then, it was hard to catch but it buzzed loudly, furiously when it spun past you. It was so large & heavy it actually made a sound whenever it landed. More often than not it landed on me. It was sluggish by that point & I managed to get a good look at it. Too big for a bluebottle, it had orange markings on its wings, face & feet. With his hefty black body he was perfectly coloured for a Hallmark Hallowe’en but his fondness for dung & his unnerving presence certainly lent him a more folk horror version.
UK’s Autumnwatch programme also came & went this week & so it seemed appropriate to check out the art world’s take on our nocturnal, autumnal beasties…
William James Webbe, The White Owl (1856)
This beautifully detailed barn owl study not only evokes the creatures of the night but the smells & mood of autumn. The soft, wet wood, the creeping ivy & the dark night sky conjure the witching hour as much as the deceased mouse. In its day, this odd image was even admired by John Ruskin at exhibition. The painting was rediscovered in an attic in 2012 & was deemed a pre-Raphaelite masterpiece, subsequently selling for over half a million GBP.
Ernst Haeckel, Tineida (1899-1904)
There comes a time every evening in late summer, early autumn when the windows have to be shut to prevent creatures like our noon fly pal getting in. We don’t particularly want them careering round the flat pointlessly & they don’t want to get stuck there. I’ve seen a moth stupid enough to fly into a hot bulb & die immediately. Because we live near trees, our window sills are all too often littered with little corpses. I can assure you, none of the moths round here are as fancy or exotic as Haeckel’s, yet there are over 2,500 species of moth in the UK alone.
Vincent van Gogh, Die Fledermaus (1886)
& where there are abundant moths, there are bats. Resource partitioning is the biological system whereby different animals eat different prey at different times of the day. Because of this, in an ideal world, there is enough food (or resources) for everyone. The fact that Vincent’s bat looks more as if he is about to perform a number at the Moulin Rouge than swoop around hunting moths & other insects suggests it was painted from a badly stuffed & posed specimen, perhaps in a museum.
Hans Hoffmann, A Hedgehog (Erinaceus roumanicus) (before 1584)
It is easy to see Albrecht Dürer’s influence on Hoffmann’s sweet & meticulous hedgehog. It is said he was less inspired by nature itself than by Dürer’s incredible works, copying many of them & he was best-known for his natural history drawings. The detail here is phenomenal & one can imagine why he’d be picked to be a court painter in 1585.
Eileen Alice Soper, Badger By Moonlight (?)
As a result of misinformation, wilful misinterpretation of science & an ongoing pandering to a certain type of farmer in the UK, badgers here are a persecuted species. There is also a certain type of person that is never happy unless something is being hunted & killed for no real reason & when those two worlds of ignorance come together it’s a disaster for wildlife in these nations. As a result, much of the art surrounding the European badger is not great, but sentimental & twee, among the worst traits of the art world. These works endeavour to sway public opinion in favour of the badger, but however well-meaning, the badger has suffered enough. Happily, through this woodcut, Eileen Soper manages to convey some of the feelings we have towards the badger whilst producing a well-composed & realistic image of a beautiful free wild animal.
Franz Marc, The Foxes (1913)
Another misunderstood creature is the red fox. There is no-one I despise more than the hunter for “sport.” It’s a twisted notion of sport to imagine that the odds stacked so unfairly will result in any kind of wholesome pastime. Perhaps their nocturnal nature contributes to the misunderstanding of foxes & badgers or perhaps that’s just an excuse. Marc’s evident love of nature & affinity for animals is rarely more palpable than in his foxes. The deep warm red & the animals’ protective expressions add to a beautiful & dynamic composition. The painting survived the Nazi degenerate art purge & indeed its owner also escaped Sachsenhausen concentration camp to be able sell it on in 1940.
Babs Webb, King In the North (2019?)
This time last year, I also used a Babs Webb piece to showcase Hallowe’en in art & here she provides us with another creature of the night. She perfectly captures the folk horror spirit in every image she creates & her wolf is no different.
Odilon Redon, The Smiling Spider (1881)
Well alright, it’s not strictly nocturnal, but if your house isn’t stuffed full of spiders at this time of year, you surely live at the North Pole. & apart from bats, what creature says Hallowe’en more? Our friend the noon fly would have given any spider a run for its money in terms of size & weight. Anyway, Redon’s charcoal spider is housed in the Louvre & I for one love the idea that something so whimsically sinister resides in one of the world’s top art galleries. But why does he have ten legs?
It’s almost Hallowe’en. Why not?
Friday, October 29, 2021
Flights and Frights - Oct 29, 2021 – Friday Video Distractions
I'll be ending the piece with a Halloween-specific item for this final October weekend. Monday's sun will rise over the first day of November, which for me brings the first hint of the end-of-year holiday season. Oh, the official launch of that will be off on the 25th, with the start of the extended Thanksgiving weekend here in the states. For me, that's part of a "holiday feel" block that will run till New Year's Day. I expect I'll be hitting those themes again and again in the remaining weeks of 2021, though. No need to rush it. Still, a hint of
But that's Out There! For us and now, though, to the screens!
I wanted to squeeze a reminder to myself and any others who might be interested that this weekend's the end of the HBO Max run for Sopranos prequel film The Many Saints of Newark. Come Monday it'll be gone, not back for months.
Some shows have been wrapping their seasons recently, others just beginning.
On Hulu, Only Murders In the Building wrapped its 10-episode first season (it was renewed for a second back in September), remaining engaging throughout, even as it layered in plot and character complications. The creation of Steve Martin (one of the leads) and John Hoffman, it centers on a cross-generational trio of misfits who bond initially over being fans of a true crime podcast, and then as people who live in the same, storied, New York City building -- and are confronted with the increasingly suspicious death of a fellow tenant. I'd given the intro to the series back in my September 3rd piece.
Over on Paramount+, the second, ten-episode season of the animated Star Trek: Lower Decks finished back on October 14th. The series managed to deliver an action comedy that both pokes fun at the overall universe, lore and tropes of the extended, 55 year-old, Star Trek universe, while still very much being an ongoing part of it.
In a similar spirit of expanding the universe of Trek, this week (also on Paramount+) saw the launch of a new, animated (cgi style) adventure piece that's co-branded with kid's entertainment brand Nickelodeon. It's Star Trek: Prodigy. It centers on a diverse group of young people of various species who will be discovering the highest ideals embodied by Star Fleet. The series launched with the first two, 23-minute each, back-to-back episodes, which assemble the main players and begin the hopeful arc. It's an all-ages affair, specifically targeted to be welcoming to kids. Here's the trailer:
I
watched this very shortly after it appeared 3am local time here on the
East Coast - I keep odd hours when I can, and even when I really can't -
and was generally pleased with the performances, pace and themes, all
taken in with the understanding that it's intended to draw in a younger
audience. Voice talent here - the adult end of it - includes John Noble
and Kate Mulgrew, which added to the fun.
Recorded
Thursday night while I was sleeping (knocked out early, waking back up
for a block early Friday), I still have yet to get to the third season
finale for FX's vampire mockumentary What We Do In the Shadows, which is also available over on Hulu.
Another good season finale, setting up a new, scattered pairing for at least the start of season four.
Sunday, on Halloween, BBC America (here in the states -- guess where in the U.K.) we'll
So, this Sunday will launch the last, concentrated run of Doctor Who we'll be seeing until sometime in 2023 - the Doctor's 60th anniversary, when once and future showrunner Russell T. Davies (who presided over the relaunched series in 2005, and stayed through 2010, when the second modern Doctor ,David Tennant, also departed the series.)
Let's not rush things, though. Here's the trailer for this 6-episode season, overall titled Flux, beginning Sunday. (Programming note: BBC America will be debuting the first episode in a simulcast with the BBC, where it's five hours later than here on the East Coast, so it'll first be airing Sunday afternoon for us. An expanded version will air for us 8PM Sunday, too. Before getting to this week's final item, for those who have Turner Classic Movies, I'll mention what seasonal items they have coming this weekend - at least the ones I consider highlights - starting tonight (all times Eastern):
Friday:
8PM The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) (I keep coming back around to this, don't I? Well, this time it's TCM that's done it.)
10PM Night of the Living Dead (1968) (This may be the cleaned-up/restored/enhanced version available through Criterion and over on HBO Max. The film's also available free on Tubi.)
Saturday:
Midnight Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
8:15 AM Chamber of Horrors (1966) A somewhat gimmicky, revenge picture. The trailer (seen here in a moment) is a sad joke, played out so long it may have been a template for too many Saturday Night Live sketches, but I remember the film itself as being entertaining. 2:45 PM The Haunting (1963)
4:45 PM The Tomb of Ligeia (1964/5 depending on where) Okay, it's one of those Roger Corman, pseudo-Poe films, but isn't that really enough? Starring Vincent Price, though over the years I've found out that that was at the insistence of the investors. Corman wanted a younger, more contemporarily handsome actor, like Richard Chamberlain, as the part was supposed to be a man around 25-30. Price was in his mid-fifties.
Looking back on it, screenwriter Robert Towne doubled down on this thinking, perhaps a tad unkindly to the star.
He said the film "...was a little dull. I think it would have been
better if it had been with a man who didn't look like a necrophiliac to
begin with... I love Vincent. He's very sweet. But, going in, you
suspect that Vincent could bang cats, chickens, girls, dogs, everything.
You just feel that necrophilia might be one of his Basic Things. I'd
felt the role called for an almost unnaturally handsome guy who the
second wife could easily fall in love with. There should also be a sense
of taboo about the close tie he had with his first wife – as though it
was something incestuous, two halves of the same person."
6:15 PM The Fly (1958) Once again with Vincent Price, albeit in a supporting role.
8 PM Frankenstein (1931)
9:30 PM Young Frankenstein (1974)
Midnight Cat People (1942) The first of a pair of Jacques Tournier-directed, feline fright flicks, being followed by...
Sunday
1:22 AM The Leopard Man (1943)
4:30 AM Carnival of Souls
(1962) -- yeah, it's a low-budget piece that IMHO opinion goes on
half-again longer than it should, but some have elevated this to cult
film status. Still, here at 4:30 on a Sunday morning, it may be just
what you need to go back to sleep.
8:45 AM White Zombie (1932)
3:30 PM The Pit and the Pendulum (1961) Another Roger Corman-directed Poe adaptation starring Vincent Price, this one with the screenplay by Richard Matheson, who had gotten firmly on the genre map back in 1954 with his novel I Am Legend, and whose story work has been adapted repeatedly to screens big and small.
8PM Psycho (1960) Well, hey... you have to have seen this at least once.
After that, I guess, go to bed. The true horror waits mere hours away, with the start of Monday!
Forty five years ago tonight – October 29, 1976 – ABC gave Paul Lynde a broadcast hour for a holiday special. ABC knew he was wildly popular, but two attempts to fit him in sitcoms had failed terribly, so they were struggling with how to best showcase him, and to otherwise help keep him busy with something. This special – so very much a thing of its time – was all in all a much better move. Oh, it’s campy, but there’s a greater expectation and so a higher tolerance for that sort of thing in this format.
With a bizarre array of guests – including Margaret “Wicked Witch of the West” Hamilton, Billie “Witchiepoo” Hayes, Tim Conway, Florence Henderson, Billy Barty, Betty White, Kiss, and Donny & Marie Osmond - It’s The Paul Lynde Holiday Special. In so many ways a creature of its time. Running 50m 37s in this YouTube video.
I've no idea what any of this will look like to a modern,
substantially-under-50 audience, there's much to date it, most of all
perhaps the inclusion of Roz Kelly. Roz was modestly famous at the time
for playing Pinky Tuscadero, girlfriend of Fonzie (Henry Winkler) on the
then highly popular Happy Days. Moreover, how much currency the
likes of "Witchiepoo"will have is also a mystery to me, as I've no idea
if Sid and Martgy Kroft's H.R. Puf'n'stuff has gotten much syndication
in the past forty or so years. (The show itself was a single season, in
the fall of 1969, and spawned a musical film the following year.) Aside
from that, Donny and Marie? Disco?
Hey, it's a Friday! I'd suggest considering taking this with a strong drink - just the way Paul did!
Here, comedy writing legend Bruce Vilanch - who was part of the writing team for the special - reminisces about it in a brief section from his interview for the Archive of American Television.
And that's plenty for this week. I'll think about November once I'm a step or two closer! Take care, and may you only get the best candy! - Mike
Thursday, October 28, 2021
Trawling Through The Thrift Stores with Joseph Finn
Happy Thursday everyone! We're in the last week of Spooktober, the leaves are falling and it's crispy cold outside, and I've a few interesting things to talk about this week.
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I'm always slightly surprised how The Criterion Collection has a taste for schlock, whether for historical value or for a sense of fun. The Blog is a great example, an early release for them (it's numbered 91 and is on my shelf between Chasing Amy and Fiend Without A Face) that highlights how important the movie really is in the history of major B-movies and in many ways introducing audiences to a fresh-faced, absolutely-a-teen Steve McQueen. But also, noting that the movie is a lot of silly fun! This is an independent movie in many of the best ways, made outside of the Hollywood system with a crew that had mostly made religious shorts before and with a cast of East Coasters, many of whom had never been in a film before.
And goodness, those effects. Is it a lot of rear-projection? Absolutely. But does this larger-and-larger blob become legitimately menacing as the movie goes on? 100% There's a scene in a movie theater (and part of the charming menace of this movie is how the blob is contrasted, like above, against the clean-cut consumer whiteness of late '50s America in the movies) that is actually terrifying as the blob threatens and definitely kills at least a few people.
Hey look, Steve McQueen! Totally a teenager*!
The movie isn't perfect. The ending kind of grinds to a halt though it does have some fun with using ice machines to defeat the blob but it doesn't quite land. But I will always recommend it as something worth checking out for the fun and for a window into '50s B-movies.
And then you can do a fun compare-and-contrast with the 1988 version, which has a lot to recommend about it. The effects are absolutely amazing and gross (the body count here is way higher, so be warned) and it has one of the best and most underappreciated women in horror performances by Shawnee Smith, who has been in many things (like a long run on the Ted Danson sitcom Becker) but is simply fantastic here as someone who steps up and kicks absolute ass. Sorry, you also have to deal with Kevin Dillon.
The Blob (1958) is streaming on HBO Max, Criterion Channel, Crackle and Plex.
The Blob (1988) is streaming on Peacock.
*McQueen was born in 1930 and was nearly 28 when he made this movie.
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Now here's a TV series I only known from its remake. There were four seasons of the remake of Wallander, starring Kenneth Branagh and initially Tom Hiddleston (more on that later) and airing on BBC. It's a quite fine, dark series that does indeed feel like the best of Nordic Noir. There was a nice visual touch that even though the spoken language of the series was English, all the on-screen language (computer screens, memos and so on) were Swedish. SO finding this collection of the first three episodes of the original, Swedish series was a nice surprise. Obviously in this case the spoken language is Swedish, but I assume it's just as dark as the BBC series. There's apparently 32 episodes in total so I'll swing into this and see if I liked it as much as the Branagh version.
That trailer is, let's be clear, kind of schlocky.
Wallander (BBC) is streaming on HBO Max, Hoopla and BritBox.
2 of the three season of Swedish Wallander are streaming on Hoopla.
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Short one this week so I'll just recommend that if you can go to the theater or have access to HBO Max then Dune is worth your time. It's a smart, well-acted adaptation that yes, is 2 1/2 hours long but earns that length for this first half of the first novel, of which we'll see the conclusion in 2023. It's quite good and worth your time if you're interested in deeply weird science fiction.
Wednesday, October 27, 2021
The Crystal Singer by Anne McCaffrey -- a review by Elleanore G. Vance
Killashandra Ree has trained at the conservatory for years. The Maestro has told her that with her natural ability of perfect pitch, all she needs is time and training to be a starring soloist. Except now, a decade of hard work and dedication later, he is telling her that there us a defect in her voice. She will only ever be a chorus member. Her life's ambition dashed in an instant. She is far to passionate to be a member of the chorus, so she packs her bags and heads to the spaceport
While trying to decide what she wants to do with the rest of her life in the spaceport bar (where else does one contemplate life's big questions?) She meets a man from Ballybran. Well, okay. He's not from there. No one is from Ballybran. He works there as a crystal singer.
They hit it off and he talks Killashandra into showing him around. They have a fun time for a few days, maybe a month, and then he announces that he needs to return to Ballybran (ooh, ominously foreboding). Back at the spaceport, an accident occurs and the man is injured, causing him to fall into a coma.
Not wanting to just leave him all alone, Killashandra decides to accompany him and watch over him on his way back to Ballybran. This is not Douglas Adams space travel, either. Killashandra and the crystal singer must go the long way: waypoint to waypoint. Finally, they reach Ballybran's moon, the closest that any non crystal singer can get to the planet.
In the span of her travel, Killashandra has been considering applying to the Heptite guild, the Crystal singer's union, of sorts. The cortex has very little information, income range of members is about it. Only when Killashandra arrives on Ballybran's moon and asks, is she able to access all of the information she needs about the Hepatite Guild. Some of the risks of this job include paranoia and memory loss, and that is if she survives the transition to Ballybran's environment.
We follow Killashandra as she takes the leap, the very permanent leap to cutting the crystals used for interplanetary travel and communication. It doesn't take long for her to start making waves, cutting the highly valuable and sought after black crystal.
The story itself makes me think of miners during the California Gold Rush of 1849, complete with claim jumping, and paranoia.
I first read this book when I was thirteen or so and was able to revisit it recently. Killashandra resonated with me even more as a late-30-something-on-her-fifth-career, than as a teenager getting cut from Children's Choir because I couldn't sight- sing. The "you're not good enough and never will be" conversation has the sting of reality in it and we feel her pain. Because of the pace of the story, she feels rather rash, but she is almost meditative. This isn't to be confused indecisive. Killashandra knows her own mind and keeps her own counsel
If you want a sci-fi story with an independent female lead who can handle herself, check out Crystal Singer
⭐⭐⭐⭐4/5
Tuesday, October 26, 2021
Greta Garbo and John Gilbert -- a pair, but not in the way MGM wanted you to think -- Garbo
In last week's post about "Queen Christina," I wrote a bit about Garbo emerging into public life during he age of the boyish flapper, and about her spare athletic Scandinavian frame being perceived as quite masculine to American movie-goers. John Gilbert, the romantic lead in "Queen Christina," was physically bigger than his female co-star, but the film shows the romantic pair as being more similar in s1ze. In addition, they are alike in style of dress, and there are some flipped expectations of traditional body dominance.
In "Queen Christina," Garbo and Gilbert are given to us as a somewhat androgynous couple, one person a bit more masculine and the other person a bit more feminine. The two remind me of the presentation of the elven people in the Lord of the Rings movies, or like some of the figures of history or mythology drawn by Aubrey Beardsley.
So diferent from standard Hollywood romances where the men were men, blah blah blah. What a relief for Garbo not to be in her usual movie-poster posture, head thrown back, neck exposed "I know you're a vampire but I'm so hot for you I'll let you drink my blood" position. John Gilbert also looks pleased with the situation.
The two were in a number of motion pictures together and the publicity stills and posters looked like this:
I think Greta Garbo and John Gilbert were much less like MGM movie stars madly and passionately in love, and more like Raggedy Ann and Andy.
Garbo's family in Stockholm was very poor and her blue-collar father died when Greta was fourteen. She left school to work, and then did modeling before starting her career in silent film. Her circumstances were not dissimilar to those of the young women central to the plot of Garbo's second major film release. "Joyless Street" (titled "Streets of Sorrow" in the U.S.) was set in Vienna after the First World War, when bread lines were long and options were few. The economically-pressed women start out as laborers, then get better-paying jobs as "entertainers" in shady nightspots, then end up doing whatever they need to do to bring home money or food to their families. I don't think Greta Garbo was driven to do terribly degrading things, but who knows what she had to put up with to get a job in the movies and have the money to help her widowed mother.
John Gilbert's young life was also tough. Gilbert's parents were traveling actors and he got the kind of child-rearing you'd expect, followed by a stint in military boarding school. In the silent film "Flesh and the Devil," Gilbert is a military cadet late for inspection because he's been out all night. Like his character, Gilbert had a complicated love life, kept late hours, drank to excess and got himself into scrapes. He married one of his wives while still married to his previous wife, and later there were various whirlwind romances and rushed marriage ceremonies in Mexico, Las Vegas and in a dressing room on the MGM lot.
By all reports, Garbo was comfortable with John Gilbert, with whom she had a close personal friendship, which may nor may not have been romantic. Whatever their relationship was, I personally like to see Garbo looking at Gilbert, and Gilbert looking at Garbo, in "Queen Christina." Though of course considering the way close-ups actually worked in classic Hollywood, who knows if they were even in the same room at these special moments. Still, in their scenes together, it's obvious that they feel much better together than they'd each felt with various other co-stars in the biz.
What a pair, eh?
Next week: "The Painted Veil" and Garbo's ambivalence about show business
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