Happy Birthday, Peter Yarrow!

Today is Peter Yarrow's 80th birthday, and I wish him many more healthy and enjoyable years. I was a fan of Peter, Paul and Mary and remember listening to their songs on the radio when I was a child.

Puff, the Magic Dragon (1963):

Blowin' in the Wind (1963):

Day is Done (1969):

He's always been a political activist, and here he is in 2011 at Occupy Wall Street:

Peter Yarrow Sings at Occupy Wall Street from John Skelson on Vimeo.

He has a website here.

The Man in Grey

The Man in Grey is a 1943 drama starring Margaret Lockwood, James Mason, Phyllis Calvert, and Stewart Granger. A family history told is flashback. There are grim, stern women and silly girls, and ill-fated romance. But all's well that ends well. Not really my thing, but if you like costume dramas and romance you'll surely like this. Why it was selected as one of the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die is beyond me.

via Youtube:

The New York Times says in a 1945 review, "The British are usually quite able when they make films about their nation's past, but the hands of the artists slipped gravely when they fashioned "The Man in Grey."" BFI Screen Online notes it "emerged to a generally poor critical reception, but it was hard to argue with the box office - it was one of the ten most successful British films of 1943."

Coffee and Cigarettes: Somewhere in California

Coffee and Cigarettes: Somewhere in California:

is a 1993 short film which mostly involves a conversation in a coffee shop between Tom Waits and Iggy Pop. Jim Jarmusch directs.

The Revenge of Frankenstein

The Revenge of Frankenstein is a 1966 Hammer horror film starring Peter Cushing. Don't turn up your nose at these Hammer horror movies. Sit back and enjoy it!

Variety describes it as "a high grade horror film". Moria has a positive review and says, "The Hammer production crew are on top form with luxuriant photography, a rich and lavish score and exquisitely dressed sets. [Director] Terence Fisher is on excellent form too." 1000 Misspent Hours has a 4 out of 5 rating and has a glowing review. Empire Online concludes with this: "Expertly executed example of a golden time in British cinema - one to savour".

DVD Talk says

this thoughtful mix of mad surgery and tragic disfigurement is one of the best Frankenstein films ever, made when the studio was at the height of its creative powers. Peter Cushing alters his interpretation of the rash vivisectionist and Jimmy Sangster's intriguing script pulls in several fresh ideas.

Rotten Tomatoes has a critics score of 92%.

Multi-Colored Lady

Multi-Colored Lady, from his 1973 debut solo album:

by Gregg Allman, who died a year ago today. Lyrics excerpt:

Got on a bus in Memphis
Destination Rome
Georgia ain't no paradise
But a place I just call home

Jimmie's Texas Blues

Jimmie's Texas Blues:

by Jimmie Rodgers, who died on this date in 1933 at the age of 35 after years of suffering from tuberculosis.

lyrics excerpt:

Some like Chicago some love Memphis Tennessee
Some like Chicago some love Memphis Tennessee
Give me sweet Dallas Texas where the women think the world to me


You may have your troubles I'm having my troubles too
You may have your troubles I'm having my troubles too
Yes I know how it feels when you're feeling so doggone blue

I'm not singing the blues I'm telling you the hard luck I've had
I'm not singing the blues I'm telling you the hard luck I've had
The blues ain't nothing but a good man feeling bad

Secret Beyond the Door

Secret Beyond the Door is a 1948 film noir directed by Fritz Lang and starring Joan Bennett and Michael Redgrave. Natalie Schafer, best known as Lovey Howell in Gilligan's Island, also has a role. A new bride discovers her husband is hiding secrets. You might be reminded of Bluebeard or perhaps Rebecca. Don't get me wrong, this is a fine enough movie, but I don't understand why it's included in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die.

via Youtube:

The New York Times concludes a mixed review with this: "for all its psycho-nonsense, this film has some mildly creepy spots and some occasional faint resemblance to "Rebecca," which it was obviously aimed to imitate." Slant Magazine gives it 2.5 out of 5 stars and concludes, "Insofar as every Fritz Lang film you haven’t seen is an undiscovered country, Secret Beyond the Door flies high over its seemingly anonymous place in the master’s 1940s phase."

Empire Online calls it a "Sloppy effort". Rotten Tomatoes has a critics score of 54%. TCM has information.

Mercury

Mercury is a 2016 novel by Margot Livesey. I came across this used and picked it up not knowing anything about the book or the author. I found this a fascinating look at how little we really know even the people closest to us and how disastrous keeping secrets can be. I'll definitely look for more books by Livesey. You can read an excerpt here.

from the book:

Donald believes he knows all there is to know about seeing. An optometrist in suburban Boston, he is sure that he and his wife, Viv, who runs the local stables, are both devoted to their two children and to each other. Then Mercury -a gorgeous young thoroughbred with a murky past- arrives at Windy Hill, and everything changes.

Hilary, a newcomer to town, has inherited Mercury from her brother after his mysterious death. When she first brings Mercury to board at Windy Hill, everyone is struck by his beauty and prowess, particularly Viv. As she rides him, Viv begins to dream of competing again, embracing the ambitions that she harbored before she settled for a career in finance. Her daydreams soon morph into consuming desire, and her infatuation with the thoroughbred escalates into obsession.

Donald may have 20/20 vision, but he is slow to notice how profoundly Viv has changed and how these changes threaten their quiet, secure world. By the time he does, it is too late to stop the catastrophic collision of Viv's ambitions and his own myopia.

The New York Times closes with this:

This is, in the end, less a book about mercurial change than mundane mismatch. There are the incongruities between the husband’s and the wife’s understanding of their marriage. There’s the difference between Viv’s aspirations and what the quotidian constraints of her life allow. And you could say that the novel suffers from a similiar flaw. It’s a book that doesn’t quite measure up to its ambitions.

The Boston Globe concludes,

In constructing a narrator who is at once transparent (he reveals so much of himself, his limitations and his puzzlement over them, to the reader) and opaque (he is frequently emotionally unavailable to the people around him and even to himself), Livesey roots tension not just in the bones but in the very marrow of the book. In the end, this is not so much a crime novel as a novel about a trial: the story of one man’s austere endeavor to hold himself to account.

The New Yorker says, "The novel explores themes of honesty and understanding by showing the impact that obsessions—grief, rapacity—can have on a marriage." Kirkus Reviews closes with this: "Uncharacteristically dark, yet more evidence of Livesey’s formidable gifts."

The Expendables 3

The Expendables 3 is an action movie, 3rd in a series, which balances seriousness with light humor in perfect proportion.

trailer:

Rolling Stone concludes, "The Expendables 3, trading on our affection for action stars of the past, has officially worn out its already shaky welcome." Empire Online gives it 3 out of 5 stars. Roger Ebert's site gives it 3 out of 4 stars and says, "Unlike most film series, “The Expendables III” sows the seeds for its own youthful reboot." Variety calls it "The latest, longest and least necessary entry in this increasingly expendable action franchise."

Rotten Tomatoes has an audience score of 49%.

Artist in Her Studio

I am recovering from a concussion and not able to participate online hardly at all right now. 

Except for some dizziness I'm fine, but the dizziness makes computer use difficult. 

I'm glad I have so many scheduled posts lined up!

I expect to be back soon.

Artist in Her Studio (1905):

by Charles Camoin, associated with Fauvism, who died on May 20, 1965. When the artist in the painting above is ready for a break, she can take the bottle on that table over to this table:

Still Life with the Window of the Workshop Open to the Port of Saint Tropez

There is a short biography online here. You can see more of his work here.

The Dinner

The Dinner is a 2009 book by Dutch author Herman Koch, translated into English and published in the U.S.A. in 2013. It's been adapted for film, but I haven't seen the movie. The book takes place in the summer. There are no likable characters here, from children to adults. They are ugly, self-centered, vile, and dangerous people. And that's during dinner at a fancy restaurant. I found it fascinating, a look at what people are willing to do to protect the lives they think they are living.

from the back of the book:

It's a summer's evening in Amsterdam, and two couples meet at a fashionable restaurant for dinner. Between mouthfuls of food and over the scrapings of cutlery, the conversation remains a gentle hum of polite discourse. But behind the empty words, terrible things need to be said, and with every forced smile and every new course, the knives are being sharpened.

Each couple has a fifteen-year-old son. The two boys are united by their accountability for a single horrific act -an act that has triggered a police investigation and shattered the comfortable, insulated worlds of their families. As the dinner reaches its culinary climax, the conversation finally touches on their children, and as civility and friendship disintegrate, each couple shows just how far they are prepared to go to protect those they love.

Skewering everything from parenting values to pretentious menus to political convictions, this novel reveals the dark side of genteel society and asks what each of us would do in the face of unimaginable tragedy.

The New York Times says, "The success of “The Dinner” depends, in part, on the carefully calibrated revelations of its unreliable and increasingly unsettling narrator, Paul Lohman. Whatever else he may be, likable he is not" and calls it "absorbing and highly readable". The Guardian says it's "a well-paced and entertaining novel". NPR concludes, "The best part about The Dinner was this tension taking place above the plates. As the meal wore on, I realized I couldn't get up from the table."

Tarzan and the Golden Lion

Tarzan and the Golden Lion is the 1927 film adaptation of the 1922 Edgar Rice Burroughs novel with the same title. The film stars James Pierce as Tarzan and features Boris Karloff as a tribal villain.

via Youtube:

Colonial 42

seen on a morning walk

Midshipman's Hope

Midshipman's Hope is the first book in the Seafort Saga by David Feintuch. I don't care for coming-of-age stories or books with adolescent protagonists, but that's exactly what this is and I like it fine.

from the back of the book:

A hideous accident kills the senior officers of the UNS Hibernia -leaving a terrified young officer to save three hundred colonists and crew aboard a damaged ship, on a seventeen-month gauntlet to reach the colony of Hope Nation. With no chance of rescue or reinforcement, Nicholas Seafort must overcome despair, exhaustion, guilt; he must conquer malfunctions, mutiny, and an alien horror beyond human understanding.

He must save lives. And he must take them, in the name of duty...

The Manitou

The Manitou is a 1978 horror film starring Tony Curtis, Michael Ansara, Susan Strasberg, Stella Stevens, Jon Cedar, Ann Sothern, and Burgess Meredith. This is the story of a woman who has a tumor in her neck that contains a human fetus that turns out to be an old Native American shaman being reborn to seek vengeance. The cast sounds wonderful, doesn't it? The music is dreadful and dreadfully intrusive.

Moria gives it 3.5 stars and calls it this director's finest moment, saying, "The Manitou contains a particularly strong building atmosphere of eldritch eeriness. The film could almost be an H.P. Lovecraft story". Horror News thinks it's fun. Roger Ebert gives it 1 star and calls it "easily the least plausible thriller since, oh, “Infra-Man.”"

Jazz "Hot"

Jazz "Hot":

is a 1938 short film on jazz featuring Django Reinhardt, who died on this date in 1953 of a brain hemorrhage at the age of 43.

Nighthawks

Nighthawks:

by Edward Hopper who died at the age of 84 on this date in 1967. The painting has inspired writers and musicians including Tom Waits' Nighthawks at the Diner (1975):

and has been used in culture and political memes:

"This place is packed!"

Pull up to the counter, and join me for a cuppa joe. I take mine black. You?

A View from a Hill

A View from a Hill is a 1925 ghost story by M.R. James. It begins,

How pleasant it can be, alone in a first-class railway carriage, on the first day of a holiday that is to be fairly long, to dawdle through a bit of English country that is unfamiliar, stopping at every station. You have a map open on your knee, and you pick out the villages that lie to right and left by their church towers. You marvel at the complete stillness that attends your stoppage at the stations, broken only by a footstep crunching the gravel. Yet perhaps that is best experienced after sundown, and the traveler I have in mind was making his leisurely progress on a sunny afternoon in the latter half of June.

He was in the depths of the country. I need not particularise further than to say that if you divided the map of England into four quarters, he would have been found in the south-western of them.

He was a man of academic pursuits, and his term was just over. He was on his way to meet a new friend, older than himself. The two of them had met first on an official inquiry in town, had found that they had many tastes and habits in common, liked each other, and the result was an invitation from Squire Richards to Mr. Fanshawe which was now taking effect.

The journey ended about five o’clock. Fanshawe was told by a cheerful country porter that the car from the Hall had been up to the station and left a message that something had to be fetched from half a mile farther on, and would the gentleman please to wait a few minutes till it came back? ‘But I see,’ continued the porter, ‘as you’ve got your bystile, and very like you’d find it pleasanter to ride up to the ‘all yourself. Straight up the road ‘ere, and then first turn to the left — it ain’t above two mile — and I’ll see as your things is put in the car for
You’ll excuse me mentioning it, only I though it were a nice evening for a ride. Yes, sir, very seasonable weather for the haymakers: met me see, I have your bike ticket. Thank you, sir; much obliged: you can’t miss your road, etc., etc.’

The two miles to the Hall were just what was needed, after the day in the train, to dispel somnolence and impart a wish for tea. The Hall, when sighted, also promised just what was needed in the way of a quiet resting-place after days of sitting on committees and college-meetings. It was neither excitingly old nor depressingly new. Plastered walls, sash-windows, old trees, smooth lawns, were the features which Fanshawe noticed as he came up the drive. Squire Richards, a burly man of sixty odd, was awaiting him in the porch with evident pleasure ‘Tea first,’ he said, ‘or would you like a longer drink? No? All right, tea’s ready in the garden. Come along, they’ll put your machine away. I always have tea under the lime-tree by the stream on a day like this.’ Nor could you ask for a better place. Midsummer afternoon, shade and scent of a vast lime-tree, cool, swirling water within five yards. It was long before either of them suggested a move. But about six, Mr. Richards sat up, knocked out his pipe, and said: ‘Look here, it’s cool enough now to think of a stroll, if you’re inclined? All right: then what I suggest is that we walk up the park and get on to the hill-side, where we can look over the country. We’ll have a map, and I’ll show you where things are; and you can go off on your machine, or we can take the car, according as you want exercise or not. If you’re ready, we can start now and be back well before eight, taking it very easy.’

‘I’m ready. I should like my stick, though, and have you got any field-glasses? I lent mine to a man a week ago, and he’s gone off Lord knows where and taken them with him.’

Mr. Richards pondered. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I have, but they’re not things I use myself, and I don’t know whether the ones I have will suit you. They’re old-fashioned, and about twice as heavy as they make ‘em now. You’re welcome to have them, but I won’t carry them. By the way, what do you want to drink after dinner?’

You can read it online here. It was adapted for television in 2005:

The Flavor of Green Tea over Rice

The Flavor of Green Tea over Rice is a 1952 Japanese film about the change in people's lives as post-war Japan becomes more westernized. It's directed by Yasujirō Ozu. I'm glad my marriage is a happy one, unlike the couple in this film. This couple comes to a better understanding in their middle years than they ever had as young people, though, and it's lovely to see them better realize the virtue of their marriage. This is a beautiful story.

via Youtube:

The New York Times says,

What we see of Japan in 1951 and 1952 defines the time in a fashion I am not sure I would have been as aware of had I seen the film in 1952. It is a world only seven years removed from Hiroshima. Nobody in an Ozu film, seems directly affected by the American occupation, but the American influence is everywhere, in second-hand clothes, in cigarettes, in the liberation of women.

The Chicago Reader says, "Ozu's delicate melodramas ... avoid any sense of cliche in their restrained, sometimes painfully subtle study of family relationships." Rotten Tomatoes has an audience score of 87%.

The Book of Strange New Things

The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber is a 2014 science fiction book. I was enthralled through the entire book and then was disappointed by the ending.

from the back of the book:

Called to a mission of a lifetime, Peter travels light-years from his wife, Bea, to an astonishing new environment. He's to preach to a seemingly friendly native population struggling with a dangerous illness and hungry for Peter's teachings. But when Bea's letters from home become increasingly desperate -natural disasters are rampant and governments are crumbling- her faith begins to falter. Peter, rattled and heartsick, is forced to choose: historic humanitarian work, or the love of his life.

Replete with emotional complexity and bravura storytelling, The Book of Strange New Things is a powerful and haunting meditation on faith, love, and devotion.

The New York Times concludes,

Defiantly unclassifiable, “The Book of Strange New Things” is, among other things, a rebuke to the credo of literary seriousness for which there is no higher art than a Norwegian man taking pains to describe his breakfast cereal. As well as the literature of authenticity, Faber reminds us, there is a literature of enchantment, which invites the reader to participate in the not-real in order to wake from a dream of reality to the ineffability, strangeness and brevity of life on Earth.

NPR calls it "a remarkable work of imagination and genius." io9 says, "this really is a great book about religious faith, and what it means to people, and how it can be both an enormous source of strength and insight, and at the same time a set of blinders". The Independent says, "The Book of Strange New Things offers no easy interpretations. It is at once rather blank and simple, Faber not being given to directing the reader in what he or she should think, and richly suggestive."