Summer Holidays (07-30.IIX.009)

Abbey Road 40° Anniversary

Forty years ago on Saturday, one of the pop world's most infamous and imitated album covers was shot in a little side street in north London.

The idea for the cover of the Beatles' Abbey Road album was initially to call it Everest, after the favourite brand of cigarettes smoked by their engineer Geoff Emerik.

Then the thought of doing a Himalayan cover helped kill the idea, and instead they considered doing shoot closer to home.

"There's a sketch Paul McCartney did with four little stick men crossing the Zebra," says Brian Southall, author of the history of Abbey Road Studios.

"It gave a pretty good idea of what they wanted."

On the 8 August 1969 that the Fab Four walked out of No 3 Abbey Road, having finished basic work on what would be - and they subsequently said they knew would be - their last album.

The photographer who took the famous cover shot was the late Iain Macmillan, a close friend of Brian Southall's, who knew the Beatles through working with Yoko Ono.

"He was given about 15 minutes," says Mr Southall.

"He stood up a stepladder while a policeman held up the traffic, the band walked back and forth a few times and that was that."

He only took seven or eight pictures, now in the Apple archive, but they're fascinating for their difference to the end product we all know.

Most striking is the one of the band walking in the opposite direction (right to left), caught mid-stride in different poses.

It looks all wrong of course, and draws attention to the accidental symmetry - despite Paul being out of step - of the final cover shot with its pattern of four firm inverted V shapes.

In one of the alternative takes Paul McCartney is wearing sandals he kicked off during the shoot.

This matters if you remember how the album cover was taken as evidence for the conspiracy theories that "Paul is Dead."

Barefooted, out of step, the car number plate behind him referring to his age - 28 if he'd lived - the Beatles forming a funeral procession for him.

George was cast as the gravedigger, Ringo the undertaker, and John the priest.

Years later in 1993, the very much alive Paul McCartney would spoof the cover and the rumours for his "Paul is Live" concert album.

A lesser noted curiosity is that the album cover has no writing on it and is just the picture.

That is thanks to John Kosh, who at the time, was creative director at Apple.

"I insisted we didn't need to write the band's name on the cover," he says.

"They were the most famous band in the world after all - EMI said they'd never sell any albums if we didn't say who the band was, but I got my way, and got away with it."

In Memoriam: John Hughes ( 1950-2009 )

John Hughes, 59, the Hollywood director, producer and screenwriter who inspired an entire genre of teenage angst films and comedies about young outcasts, including "The Breakfast Club" and "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," and who wrote the popular "Home Alone" series about a resourceful boy with very careless parents, died Aug. 6 in New York after a heart attack on a morning walk

Never trust a woman!

Johnny got his gun (1971)

Johnny Got His Gun is a 1971 anti-war film based on the novel of the same name written and directed by Dalton Trumbo and starring Timothy Bottoms, Jason Robards, and Donald Sutherland.

Joe Bonham (Bottoms), a young American soldier hit by an artillery shell on the last day of World War I, lies in a hospital bed. He is a quadruple amputee who has also lost his eyes, ears, mouth and nose. He remains conscious and able to reason, however, rendering him a prisoner in his own body. As he drifts between reality and fantasy, he remembers his old life with his family and girlfriend (Kathy Fields). He also forms a bond, of sorts, with a young nurse (Diane Varsi) who senses his plight.

At the end of the film, Joe tries to communicate to his doctors, via Morse code, and wishes for the Army to put him in a glass coffin in a freak show as a demonstration of the horrors of war, or kill him. In the end, however, he realizes that the Army will grant neither wish, and will leave him to live the rest of his natural life as a state of living death.

In the film's climax, his nurse attempts to euthanize him by clamping his breathing tube, but her supervisor stops her before Joe can succumb. This does not occur in the novel.

The film is well known for distinguishing between Joe's reality and fantasy with black and white for the hospital, and color for his dreams.

Joe's face is never seen in the hospital scenes, and his missing limbs are covered by hospital sheets.

Romeo is Bleeding (1993)

Romeo Is Bleeding is a 1993 darkly comic police story starring Gary Oldman and Lena Olin. The film's title was taken from a Tom Waits song. Oldman plays a bad cop on the take whose actions finally catch up with him. Olin is Mona, a murderous Russian hit woman. The film has gained a cult following despite its initial failure at the box office.

Jack Grimaldi is a dirty cop who does favors for the mob in exchange for large fees. He has a loving wife, Natalie, and an adoring mistress, Sheri. He thinks he has it all, until both the cops and mob are outwitted by a vicious Russian mob assassin named Mona Demarkov.

The head of the Italian mob, Don Falcone orders the cop to deal with Demarkov or face dire consequences. Jack is unable to kill Demarkov. Soon Falcone becomes disappointed in Jack's ineptness and orders one of Jack's toes removed. Seriously injured due to the amputation and realizing that he has endangered his wife and mistress, Jack instructs his wife to leave the city immediately, giving her money and instructions where to meet him out West when the time is right. Jack also ends his affair with his mistress and puts her on a train out of the city.

Jack tries to hunt Demarkov but soon realizes that he is putty in her hands. Mona is handcuffed in the back seat of Jack's car, Mona escapes by hooking her legs around his neck, causing him to crash the car, and then slithering out over the front seat and through the shattered windshield without ever freeing her hands; the effect is simply terrifying. Jack is attracted to her sexually and no match for her professionally. Mona offers to pay Jack to help her eliminate Falcone and fake her own death. Although he obtains phony papers for her, she refuses to pay and attempts to strangle him; he shoots and seriously wounds her, but she escapes. Mona lures Jack to an abandoned warehouse, where he attempts to kill her but manages to shoot Sheri instead. Mona fixes the corpse so as to suggest that it was she, and not Sheri, who died (her scheme involves severing her own arm and substituting it for Sheri's). Mona handcuffs Jack to the bed and has her way with him in menacing S&M gear--but only after unbuckling her new prosthetic arm, her last concession to conventional appearances. Demarkov tricks Jack into killing his mistress and then forces him to kill Don Falcone, even after losing the use of her arm and having it replaced with a prosthetic. In the end, Demarkov turns Jack into the police, his former associates, and cops a plea deal that will indict Jack for the multiple murders that she tricked Jack into doing.

The police arrange a final confrontation between Jack and Demarkov at the courthouse, as he is heading in and she is heading out. Before she leaves, she threatens to kill both Jack and his wife. Thinking he has nothing to lose, and desperate to save the only thing good in his life, Jack grabs a gun from the ankle holster of one of his fellow officers and shoots her dead. Jack turns the gun on himself, only to discover that the revolver is empty. Instead of being sent to prison for the murder, he is given a commendation. This frees Jack to begin his new life in a small, remote town. He waits at the appointed time and place for Natalie to return to him, but her forgiveness is only in his mind.

Maxwell : BLACKsummers'night (2009)

Maxwell “BLACKsummers’night” was released this week. This is the first CD from the neo-soul singer in eight years.

Fans have been waiting for this for a very long time and the question is: did he deliver?

Well the answer is not simple, because by all accounts ‘BLACKsummers’night’ is a good album but it is pale in comparison to his previous classics “Maxwell’s Urban Hang Suite” "Embrya" and “Now.”

This album is the sensuous opening installment of the artist's monumental BLACKSUMMERS'NIGHT trilogy. Striving for an emotional authenticity and real world sound for the album, the entire album was recorded live in the studio with an a-list ensemble of elegantly sympathetic musicians.

the April Fools (1969)

The April Fools is a 1969 romantic comedy film starring Jack Lemmon and Catherine Deneuve, Peter Lawford and Jack Weston, with Sally Kellerman and Harvey Korman. Special Stars, Myrna Loy and Charles Boyer. Also, appearances by David Doyle and Melinda Dillon (Ralphie’s mother from A Christmas Story). Wonderful performance from Lemmon, and Catherine Deneuve is just ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL... and it does not matter that she cannot speak English well. Peter Lawford is ... well Peter Lawford but Myrna Loy and Boyer have outstanding and funny roles as an older eccentric married couple.

The movie is really about nothing other than the fact that Lemmon is getting a promotion and is invited to a party at his boss’s (Lawford) lavish Manhatten apartment where he falls madly in love with his boss’s wife (Catherine Deneuve.) He decides, after one night with this woman that he is going to Paris with her, leaving his wife (Sally Kellerman), son and new job just to be with her. And he indeed does that. But the entire movie, after the opening, is his time with Deneuve during that night while visiting with Loy and Boyer. He decides to go home to tell his wife he is leaving her and going to Paris, and there is a very Max Sennet style automobile ride to the airport where Lemmon confronts Lawford (Deneuve’s husband) before boarding the plane just in time to fly off with the most beautiful women in the world. It is entirely fanciful.... . However, with a Burt Bacharach score... and shots of the beautiful Catherine Deneuve and Manhatten in the ’60s, it is worth the little more than an hour to watch this cute and entertaining film.

The Verdict (1982)

The Verdict is a 1982 feature film which tells the story of a down-on-his-luck alcoholic lawyer who pushes a medical malpractice case in order to improve his own situation, but discovers along the way that he is doing the "right" thing. Since the lawsuit involves a woman in a persistent vegetative state, the movie is cast in the shadow of the Karen Ann Quinlan case.

The movie stars Paul Newman, Charlotte Rampling, Jack Warden, James Mason, Milo O'Shea and Lindsay Crouse.

Directed by Sidney Lumet, the movie was adapted by David Mamet from the novel by Barry Reed and is not a remake of the 1946 film, The Verdict, directed by Don Siegel and starring Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre.

The Verdict was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Paul Newman), Best Actor in a Supporting Role (James Mason), Best Director, Best Picture and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium.

• Robert Redford was originally slated to star in this film, but he was uncomfortable with the script. After several rewrites, he decided that he did not like the story and left the project. Sidney Lumet came on board and chose the original script as the one he would direct.
• Bruce Willis has an uncredited background appearance as an extra, in one of his first film projects. During the closing arguments of the trial, he is clearly seen sitting next to another uncredited extra, Tobin Bell.
• In the school yard scene, the graffiti on the building wall, clearly says, Pink Floyd "The Wall", The Who, and Physical Graffiti, the name of a famous double album by Led Zeppelin.