In Memoriam : Tony Curtis (1925-2010)

Following (1998)

Following is a 1998 neo-noir film directed by Christopher Nolan. It tells the story of a young man who follows strangers around the streets of London and is drawn into a criminal underworld when he fails to keep his distance. The film was made on a small budget and features an unusual non-linear plot structure which has been a structure in several of Christopher Nolan's films.

It was written, directed, filmed, and co-produced by Christopher Nolan. It was filmed in London, England, on black-and-white 16mm film stock. Nolan used a non-linear plot structure for his movie, a device he again used in Memento, Batman Begins and The Prestige. This type of storytelling, he says, reflected the audience's inherent uncertainty about characters in film noir:

"In a compelling story of this genre we are continually being asked to rethink our assessment of the relationship between the various characters, and I decided to structure my story in such a way as to emphasize the audience's incomplete understanding of each new scene as it is first presented."

Following was written and planned to be as inexpensive to produce as possible, but Nolan has described the production of Following as "extreme", even for a low-budget shoot. With little money, limited equipment, and a cast and crew who were all in full-time employment on weekdays, the shoot took a full year to complete.

To conserve expensive film stock, every scene in the film was rehearsed extensively to ensure that the first or second take could be used in the final edit. For the most part, Nolan filmed without professional film lighting equipment, employing only available light. He also used the homes of his friends and family as locations.

A struggling, unemployed young writer takes to following strangers around the streets of London, ostensibly to find inspiration for his first novel.

Initially, he sets strict rules for himself regarding whom he should follow and for how long, but soon discards them as he focuses on a well-groomed man in a dark suit. The man in the suit, having noticed he is being followed, quickly confronts the young man and introduces himself as "Cobb". Cobb reveals that he is a serial burglar and invites the young man to accompany him on various burglaries. The material gains from these crimes seem to be of secondary importance to Cobb, who takes pleasure in rifling through the personal items in his targets' flats, such as drinking their wine. He explains that his true passion is using the shock of robbery and violation of property to make his victims re-examine their lives. He sums up his attitude thus: "You take it away, and show them what they had."

The young man is thrilled by Cobb's lifestyle. He attempts break-ins of his own, as Cobb encourages and guides him. At Cobb's suggestion, he alters his appearance, cutting his hair short and wearing a dark suit. The young man assumes the name of Daniel Lloyd based on the credit card Cobb gives to him and the young man begins to pursue a relationship with a blonde woman whom he meets at a bar and who claims to be the girlfriend of a local gangster. It is later revealed that he and Cobb had broken into her flat prior to this first meeting. Soon, the blonde confides that the gangster is blackmailing her with incriminating photographs. The young man breaks into the gangster's safe, but the only photos he finds are innocuous modelling shots. After confronting the blonde, he learns that she and Cobb have been manipulating him into mimicking Cobb's methods to frame him for Cobb's recent murder charge.

The young man leaves to turn himself in to the police. The blonde reports her success to Cobb, who then reveals that he actually works for the gangster and has a plan of his own. In order to stop the blonde from blackmailing the gangster with evidence from a recent murder, Cobb kills her. Once the young man finishes his story to the police, he learns that he has been framed for the blonde's murder, which was Cobb's plan for him all along. As the young man is arrested, Cobb disappears into a crowd.

In Memoriam : Arthur Penn (27.09.1922-28.09.2010)

The original ending of Hitchcock's The Birds

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Casa Susanna

THERE was a pilot and a businessman, an accountant, a librarian and a pharmacologist. There was a newspaper publisher, and a court translator. By day, they were the men in the gray flannel suits, but on the weekends, they were Felicity, Cynthia, Gail, Sandy, Fiona, Virginia and Susanna. It was the dawn of the 1960’s, yet they wore their late 50’s fashions with awkward pride: the white gloves, the demure dresses and low heels, the stiff wigs. Many were married with children, or soon would be. In those pre-Judith Butler, pre-Phil Donahue days, when gender was more tightly tethered to biology, these men’s “gender migrations,” or “gender dysphoria,” as the sociologists began to call cross-dressing, might cost them their marriages, their jobs, their freedom.

And so they kept their feminine selves hidden, except for weekends at Casa Susanna, a slightly run-down bungalow camp in Hunter, N.Y., that was the only place where they could feel at home.

Decades later, when Robert Swope, a gentle punk rocker turned furniture dealer, came across their pictures — a hundred or so snapshots and three photo albums in a box at the 26th Street flea market in Manhattan — he knew nothing about their stories, or Casa Susanna, beyond the obvious: here was a group of men dressed as women, beautiful and homely, posing with gravity, happiness and in some cases outright joy. They were playing cards, eating dinner, having a laugh. They didn’t look campy, like drag queens vamping it up as Diana Ross or Cher; they looked like small-town parishioners, like the lady next door, or your aunt in Connecticut.

Mr. Swope was stunned by the pictures and moved by the mysterious world they revealed. He and his partner, Michel Hurst, gathered them into a book, “Casa Susanna,” which was published by Powerhouse Books in 2005 and reissued last spring, and which became an instant sensation, predictably, in the worlds of fashion and design. Paul Smith stores sold it, as did the SoHo design store and gallery Moss, which made a Christmas diorama of a hundred copies last year. Last month, you might have seen it in the hands of a child-size mannequin in the Marc Jacobs store on Bleecker Street.

But it was only after the book’s publication that Mr. Swope and Mr. Hurst began to learn the story of Casa Susanna, first called the Chevalier d’Eon resort, for an infamous 18th-century cross-dresser and spy, and only in recent months, as they have begun working on a screenplay about the place, that they have come to know some of its survivors.

“At first, I didn’t want to know more,” Mr. Swope said. “I didn’t want to find out that the stories turned out to be tragedies.”

But the publication of the book has drawn former Casa Susanna guests out, and it turns out that their stories, like most, have equal measures of tragic and comic endings. Some are still being told.

Robert Hill, a doctoral candidate in the American studies program at the University of Michigan who is completing his dissertation on heterosexual transvestism in post-World War II America, came across Mr. Swope and Mr. Hurst’s book by accident in a Borders last year, reached out to them through their publisher, and sketched in many of the details.

Casa Susanna was owned by Susanna herself — the court translator, otherwise known as Tito Valenti — and Valenti’s wife, Marie, who conveniently ran a wig store on Fifth Avenue and was happy to provide makeover lessons and to cook for the weekend guests. It was a place of cultivated normalcy, where Felicity, Cynthia, Gail, Fiona and the others were free to indulge their radical urges to play Scrabble in a dress, trade makeup tips or walk in heels in the light of day.

“These men had one foot in the mainstream and the other in the margins,” Mr. Hill said the other day. “I’m fascinated by that position and their paradox, which is that the strict gender roles of the time were both the source of their anxiety and pain, and also the key to escaping that pain.”

What still moves Murray Moss, the impresario behind Moss the store, about the images in the book is their ordinariness. “You think of man dressed as woman and you think extremes: it’s kabuki, Elizabethan theater, Lady Macbeth,” he said. “It’s also sexual. But these aren’t sexual photos. The idea that they formed a secret society just to be ... ordinary. It’s like a mirror held up to convention. It’s not what you would expect. It’s also not pathetic. Everybody looks so happy.”

At first, Casa Susanna was a thrilling place, said Sandy, a divorced businessman, “because whatever your secret fantasies were you were meeting other people who had similar ones and you realized, ‘I might be different but I’m not crazy.’ ” Now 67 and living in the Northeast, he hasn’t cross-dressed for decades, and asked that his identifying details be veiled. He was a graduate student in 1960, he said, living in New York and visiting Casa Susanna on the weekends.

“It was the most remarkable release of pressure, and it meant the world to me then,” he said. “I’d grown up in a very conventional family. I had the desire to marry, to have the house, the car, the dog. And I eventually did. But at that point there were all these conflicting desires that had no focal points. I didn’t know where I fit.”

Sandy remembers one weekend sharing a cabin with another man and his girlfriend. “She obviously accepted the situation with him for better or worse,” Sandy began. “Anyway, I didn’t get dressed until later in the day, and when I did, the girlfriend was just coming down the stairs. ‘Oh my,’ she said, ‘you certainly have made a change. I have to tell you, I much preferred the person who got out of the car.’ And with that she reached under my dress and groped me. She said, ‘It’s a shame to have all that locked up in there.’ In one sense, it was titillating, in another, depressing. And yet in another way, it put a finger on the issue.”

Casa Susanna was a testing ground for many. Katherine Cummings, who went by Fiona at Casa Susanna, was born John Cummings in Scotland 71 years ago. Now living in Sydney, she has been a transsexual for more than 20 years, as well as a librarian and an editor. When she was 28, she took a post-doctoral degree in Toronto, and spent her weekends at Casa Susanna, the first place, she said last week, where she could dress openly. In her 1992 memoir, “Katherine’s Diary,” she writes hilariously about a late October weekend, shivering in the cold bungalows, and accepting a ride from the main house down to the cabin she had been assigned with a burly man in slipshod makeup and a slapped-on wig. She turned to the back seat and froze: there lay a nightstick, handcuffs and other police paraphernalia. Turns out her chauffeur was the sheriff of a small New Jersey town.

The resort catered to hunters as well, Ms. Cummings said, and sometimes there was overlap. “Libby, who was very beautiful, was also Lee, who was a very macho person. And one day the hunters were there and so were we and they all had a great time discussing rifles.”

Mostly the guests talked and talked. “They talked about fashion, and passing, and how and if they’d told their wives or girlfriends,” said Ms. Cummings, who is divorced and has three daughters. “In those days we didn’t know where we were going.”

They had parties, and even a convention of sorts, one Halloween in 1962, that drew cross-dressers from all over the country, as well as a few psychologists from the Kinsey Institute. Led by the irascible pharmacologist Virginia Prince, who made them their own magazine, Transvestia, for which Susanna was a columnist dispensing exhortatory advice and tips on deportment and makeup, many of them formed a loose collective that decades later grew into a not-so-secret society called Tri-Ess (a k a the Society for the Second Self).

“I remember the first morning we all arrived,” Ms. Prince said last week, “and all these, let’s just call them people, descended on the bathrooms and you see all these folks in their nighties and kimonos and so forth standing around shaving. It was a very amusing sight. Beards tend to grow. I had mine removed years ago.”

Ms. Prince became known as the founder of the transgender movement, and wrote copiously on the subject for science and sex research journals and conferences, irritating more than a few Casa Susanna graduates, who weren’t comfortable with the politicizing of their issues, or the strict categories she created. Born male (and still biologically male), she has been living as a woman for the past 40 years. At 94, she’s no longer allowed to drive, but she leads the Lollies (“little old ladies like me,” she said the other day) at her California retirement home in a study group (they’re covering astronomy this month) and drives a red scooter.

“I invented gender,” she said proudly. “Though if the ladies here find out I’m a biological man I’m a dead duck.”

Of Susanna herself, the trail ends with her last column for Transvestia in 1970, when she, like Virginia, announced her plans to live henceforth as a woman.

“Scene: The porch in the main house at our resort in the Catskill Mountains,” Susanna writes in a snippet from one of her early columns, courtesy of Mr. Hill’s research, and trimmed a bit. “The time: About 4 o’clock in the morning as Labor Day is ready to awaken in the distant darkness. The cast: Four girls just making small talk. ... It’s dark in the porch; just a row of lights illuminate part of the property at intervals — perhaps a bit chilly at 2,400 feet. ... An occasional flame lighting a cigarette throws a glow on feminine faces — just a weekend at the resort, hours in which we know ourselves a little better by seeing our image reflected in new colors and a new perspective through the lives of new friends.”

Seconds (1966) ...again

"The Parfume : The Story of a Murderer" Soundtrack

As with all of Tykwer's films since 1997's Wintersleepers, the musical score for Perfume was composed by Tykwer and two of his friends Johnny Klimek and Reinhold Heil. The score was performed by the Berlin Philharmonic under the direction of conductor Simon Rattle. Tykwer began composing the score with Klimek and Heil the very day he started working on the screenplay. Tykwer said, "I feel like I understand very much about the structure and the motivations of the characters when I'm writing the script, but I really do understand the atmosphere and the emotional and the more abstract part of the film when I'm investigating the music, and when I'm planning the music for it. ... When I then come to the shooting, having worked for three years on the music and three years on the script, I really feel like I know exactly the two worlds and how to combine them." By the time it came to shooting the film, a substantial portion of music had been composed. Tykwer hired a small orchestra and recorded them performing the score. Tykwer played the recorded music on set so people could explore the atmosphere and the acoustic world of the film while they were acting in it. The music was also used instead of temp music during editing.

In the film, Dustin Hoffman's character describes perfume as being comprised of twelve scents which, when mixed by the skilled hands of a perfumer, create a layered, complex scent which he likens this to the creation of a musical chord with individual notes. The score reaches the complexity that Hoffman refers to, it works well in the film, and as album creates complently different layers of resonances.

star wars propaganda II

The Zeppelin Story (Story (History Press)) [Hardcover]

The latest installment in the successful "Story" series, "The Zeppelin Story" charts the history of these incredible airships from their conception to their fiery destruction. In the 1930s the Zeppelins ruled the skies, crossing the Atlantic with a style and elegance never seen before - or since - in air travel. The brainchild of the elderly Count Zeppelin, the airships were reinvented from the aerial bombers of the First World War to the only way for the rich and famous to travel, and with the embryonic aircraft of the time barely able to hop the Atlantic the Zeppelins were set to dominate air travel. At least, that was until the obliteration of the Hindenburg at Lakehurst, New Jersey. In many ways the tale of what might have been, this book is a concise and readable account from a recognised expert in the field. Author John Christopher is a life-long aviation enthusiast and balloon pilot. He is currently involved in Airships Initiatives, which is bringing a Zeppelin airship to the UK for pleasure trips. He has previously written "Balloons at War" and "Brunel's Kingdom" for The History Press.

The Avengers: A Celebration: 50 Years of a Television Classic [Hardcover]

Fifty years ago, production began on "The Avengers", a TV series that has yet to be rivalled for its wit, adventure and sheer style. Here, thanks to unprecedented access to the show's archive, is a glorious visual celebration of the show that defined 60s television, packed with rare and previously unpublished photographs, and memories from the cast and crew.

The book will be released in October 2010.

The Madwoman of Chaillot (1969)

World Sky Race 2011-2012

UNESCO World Heritage Centre and the World Air League, LLC have created a partnership to use the World Sky Race as a means to promote the mission of the UNESCO World Heritage Centre. This is a broad based initiative for educating the world on World Heritage Convention, celebrating the diversity of mankind, bringing attention to the world's legacy of environmental and cultural sites. The World Air League is honored to be a supporting partner to UNESCO.

Happy Birthday!

Song of the South (1946)

Song of the South is a 1946 feature film produced by Walt Disney and released by RKO Radio Pictures. The film is based on the Uncle Remus cycle of stories by Joel Chandler Harris. The live actors provide a sentimental frame story, in which Uncle Remus relates the folk tales of the adventures of Brer Rabbit and his friends. These anthropomorphic animal characters appear in animation. The hit song from the film was "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah", which won the 1947 Academy Award for Best Song and is frequently used as part of Disney's montage themes, and which has become widely-used in popular culture. The film inspired the Disney theme park attraction Splash Mountain.

The film has never been released in its entirety on home video in the USA, because of content which Disney executives believe would be construed by some as racist toward black people, and is thus subject to much rumor. Some portions of this film have been issued on VHS and DVD as part of either compilations or special editions of Disney films.

There are three animated segments in the movie (in all, they last a total of 25 minutes). These animated sequences were also shown as stand-alone cartoon features on the Disney television show. Each of these segments features at least one song that is heard in the various versions of Splash Mountain:

• "Brer Rabbit Runs Away": about 8 minutes, including the song "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah".
• "The Tar Baby": about 12 minutes, interrupted with a short live action scene about two thirds of the way into the cartoon, including the song "How Do You Do?"
• "Brer Rabbit's Laughing Place": about 5 minutes and the only segment that doesn't use Uncle Remus as an intro to its main story, including the song "Everybody's Got a Laughing Place"

The last couple of minutes of the movie contain animation, as most of the cartoon characters show up in a live-action world to meet the live-action characters (a combination of live-action and animation) as they all sing "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah", and in the last seconds of the movie, the real world is slowly merged into an animated variation as the main protagonists walk off into the sunset.

Even early in the film's production, there was concern that the material would encounter controversy. As the writing of the screenplay was getting under way, Disney publicist Vern Caldwell wrote to producer Perce Pearce that "The negro situation is a dangerous one. Between the negro haters and the negro lovers there are many chances to run afoul of situations that could run the gamut all the way from the nasty to the controversial."

When the film was first released, the NAACP acknowledged "the remarkable artistic merit" of the film, but decried the "impression it gives of an idyllic master-slave relationship."

Although the film has been re-released in theaters several times (most recently in 1986), Disney Enterprises has avoided making the complete version of the film directly available on home video in the United States because the frame story was deemed controversial by studio management. Film critic Roger Ebert, who normally disdains any attempt to keep films from any audience, has supported the non-release position, claiming that most Disney films become a part of the consciousness of American children, who take films more literally than do adults. However, he favors allowing film students to have access to the film.

Despite rumors of a imminent DVD release, Disney CEO Robert Iger stated on March 10, 2006 at a Disney Shareholder Meeting that it had been decided that the company would not re-release it for the time being. At the annual shareholders meeting in March 2007, Iger announced that the company was reconsidering the decision, and have decided to look into the possibility of releasing the film. In May 2007, it was again reported that the Disney company has chosen not to release the film. However, rumors to the contrary continued to surface. In March 2010, Disney CEO Robert Iger reiterated that there are no current plans to release the movie on DVD, calling the film 'antiquated' and 'fairly offensive'.

Disney Enterprises has allowed key portions of the film to be issued on many VHS and DVD compilation videos in the U.S., as well as on the long-running Walt Disney anthology television series. Most recently, the "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" number and some of the animated portion of the movie were issued on the Alice in Wonderland 2-DVD Special Edition set, although in that instance this was originally incorporated as part of a 1950 Walt Disney TV special included on the DVD which promoted the then-forthcoming Alice in Wonderland film.

The film has been released on video in its entirety in various European, Latin American and Asian countries—in the UK it was released on PAL VHS tape, and in Japan (where under Japanese copyright law it is in the public domain) it appeared on NTSC VHS, BETA and laserdisc with subtitles, while a NTSC laserdisc was bootlegged in Hong Kong from the UK PAL videotape. Despite the Hong Kong laserdisc being NTSC, it has a 4% faster running time due to its PAL source, and thus also suffers from "frame ghosting". While most foreign releases of the film are almost direct translations of the English title (Canción del Sur in Spanish, Mélodie du Sud in French, Melodie Van Het Zuiden in Dutch, Sången om södern in Swedish, A Canção do Sul in Portuguese, and Etelän laulu in Finnish), the German title Onkel Remus' Wunderland translates to "Uncle Remus' Wonderland", the Italian title I Racconti Dello Zio Tom translates to "The Stories of Uncle Tom", and the Norwegian title Onkel Remus forteller translates roughly to "Uncle Remus tells stories".

Despite the film's lack of home video release directly to consumers in the United States, audio from the film—both the musical soundtrack and dialogue—were made widely available to the public from the time of the film's debut up through the late 1970s. In particular, many Book-and-Record sets were released, alternately featuring the animated portions of the film or summaries of the film as a whole. Additionally, bootleg copies of the film in NTSC format, converted either from the UK PAL videotape or from a Dutch version based on the laserdisc, with subtitles made by amateurs, are widely available and have been sold in the United States at retail outlets and on online auctions with no legal action being taken by the Disney corporation.

25th Hour (2002)

25th Hour is a 2002 American drama film directed by Spike Lee and is based on the novel The 25th Hour written by David Benioff, who also wrote the screenplay. The film stars Edward Norton, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Barry Pepper, Rosario Dawson, Anna Paquin, and Brian Cox. Norton plays Montgomery "Monty" Brogan, a convicted drug dealer who has one last day of freedom before beginning a seven-year prison sentence.

It is Monty Brogan's last day of freedom before he begins serving a 7 year long sentence for dealing drugs. He plans to spend his last night with his childhood friends Jacob Elinsky and Frank Slaughtery, his girlfriend Naturelle, and his father, James.

At a night club, Jacob runs into one of his students, Mary, who goes with them into the club. Monty and Frank discuss what will happen to him in prison, and Frank promises him that they'll open a bar together once he is released. Frank and Naturelle also discuss how Monty got to this position, but Frank accuses her of not doing anything because she got used to the life his drug money afforded. He then insinuates that it might have been her who tipped off the cops. Monty and Kostya then go to speak to a group of Russian mobsters, run by Uncle Nikolai, who gives Monty some advice on how to survive in prison. Then it is revealed that it was Kostya who sold Monty out. Monty decides to leave, asserting that he will never come back and leaving Kostya at the hands of the gangsters.

While all this is happening, Jacob kisses Mary, but her stunned reaction shows Jacob that making a move on her was a mistake. He leaves, shellshocked. They all leave the club and go to a park, where Monty gives Doyle to Jacob. Monty then admits that he is terrified of being raped in prison, and asks Frank to beat him up, saying if he goes in looking ugly he might have a chance at survival. Frank refuses to do it, even after continued verbal goading by Monty, until Monty feigns an attack on Jacob. Frank reluctantly beats up Monty, giving him a black eye, broken nose, and a lot of cuts and bruises to his face. Monty then leaves his friends for the last time, as Jacob comforts a hysterically sobbing Frank.

Back home, Monty's father arrives and says that he will take him to Otisville. As his father drives him to the prison, Monty is given one last sight of freedom. Together, they envision a future where he escapes imprisonment, reunites with Naturelle, starts a family, and grows old. However, Monty submits himself to his final fate.

Slick Manhattan drug dealer Monty Brogan (Edward Norton) has 24 hours of freedom before starting a seven-year stretch in the slammer.

The Russian mob fear he's going to give them up, he wonders if his girlfriend gave him up, and his friends have given up. Philip Seymour Hoffman's naive teacher is preoccupied with an alluring student, and Barry Pepper's Wall Street suit figures Monty's getting what he deserves.

It's their final night together, and they plan to get steaming drunk...

Spike Lee's 2002 joint is about choice. Not just in Monty's dilemma over whether to stay or scarper, but his earlier decision to make easy, illegal money - and the tacit complicity of his loved ones, from lover Rosario Dawson to dad Brian Cox.

It is also about the choice facing America, post-September 11th. From the opening credits - a New York nightscape with spotlights standing in for the Twin Towers - "25th Hour" sets its stall as a picture with subtext. Brogan is the United States. (Hammering the point home, his apartment is decorated with a poster for the famously allegorical "Cool Hand Luke".)

This may all sound terribly worthy, but far from it. The message underlies but never overpowers a moving, witty character piece. The time-limited, pressure cooker environment brings to mind Lee's "He Got Game" and "Do the Right Thing", and the director showcases his admirable ability to capture moments of emotional substance through striking visual style (Hoffman's post-kiss scene is a classic).

David Benioff's honest, intelligent script - from his own novel - nails the resentment and love which characterise lifelong friendships, and captures the volatile, vital nature of seemingly inconsequential banter (recalling another movie about choice, friendship and redemption: Hal Ashby's 1973 classic "The Last Detail"). It feels true.

The slightly overblown finale can't quite fulfill the preceding promise, but this is still Lee's best picture in years. Powerful and uplifting, "25th Hour" is well worth two of yours.

c a s a f o r t e

star wars propaganda

The Queen of Spades (1949)

The Queen of Spades (1949) is a fantasy-horror film based on a short story of the same name by Alexander Pushkin. It stars Anton Walbrook, Edith Evans and Yvonne Mitchell. A poor Russian officer tries to learn the secret of an aged countess's success at the card table.

Despite a limited budget, it was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best British Film. It was also entered into the 1949 Cannes Film Festival.

Hermann, an ethnic German, is an officer of the engineers in the Imperial Russian army. He constantly watches the other officers gamble, but never plays himself. One night Tomsky tells a story about his grandmother, a elderly countess. Many years ago, in France, she lost a fortune at cards, and then won it back, with the secret of the three winning cards, which she learned from the notorious Count of St. Germain. Hermann becomes obsessed with obtaining the secret.

The countess (who is now 87 years old) has a young ward, Lizaveta Ivanovna. Hermann sends love letters to Lizaveta, and persuades her to let him into the house. There Hermann accosts the countess, demanding the secret. She first tells him that story was a joke, but Hermann refuses to believe her. He repeats his demands, but she does not speak. He draws a pistol and threatens her, and the old lady dies of fright; only later is it revealed that the pistol was empty. He escapes from the house with the aid of Lizaveta, who is disgusted to learn that his professions of love were a mask for greed.

Hermann attends the funeral of the countess, and is terrified to see the countess open her eyes in the coffin and look at him. Later that night, the ghost of the countess appears. The ghost names the secret three cards (three, seven, ace), tells him he must play just once each night, and then orders him to marry Lizaveta. Hermann takes his entire savings to Tchekalinsky's salon, where wealthy men gamble for high stakes. On the first night, he bets it all on the three and wins. On the second night, he wins on the seven. On the third night, he bets on the ace - but when cards are shown, he finds he has bet on the Queen of Spades, rather than the ace, and loses everything. When the Queen appears to wink at him, he flees in terror.

Hermann goes mad and is committed to an asylum.

He is in the Obuhovsky hospital, room Number Seventeen; he does not answer any questions, but keeps muttering with astonishing rapidity: 'Three, seven, ace! three, seven, queen!'

Bond 23 updates

According to the industry blog Deadline, "American Beauty" director Sam Mendes has taken himself out of the running to direct "The Hunger Games", the first in a trilogy of apocalyptic survival stories.

The director who has been in talks to direct Bond 23, and prior to the production halt was on the team as a consultant, was amongst David Slade and Gary Ross as possible directors for the feature film adaptation.

A Deadline source says that Medes took himself out of the running "because the MGM picture is clearing up and it looks like production on 007 could begin by late summer or early fall, 2011 with Mendes at the helm and Daniel Craig back in the Aston Martin."

from MI6

Happy Birthday!

In Memoriam : Claude Chabrol (1930-2010)

searching for SECONDS (1966)

John Frankenheimer's chilling vision of middle-aged malaise concerns 50ish banker, Arthur Hamilton (John Randolph). Bored with his wife and comfortably retired life, Arthur happens to run into Charlie Evans (Murray Hamilton), an old friend he believed to be dead. He gives Arthur a tip on a secret organization called The Company, run by the Old Man (Will Geer). For a hefty fee, they offer to provide the old with entirely new, vigorous bodies, through a mysterious form of plastic surgery, and with completely new identities. Arthur signs on and finds himself transformed into the much younger Anitochus "Tony" Wilson (Rock Hudson). After a suitably middle-aged corpse has been burned to cover his disappearance, Tony is relocated to an idyllic Malibu beach community, where he already has a reputation as an artist. He begins a relationship with the vivacious Norma Marcus (Salome Jens) and is happy for a time, before discovering that she's one of The Company's employees. As he peels back the layers from his other neighbors, he begins to realize that nothing is as it seems. This incisive twist on the Faust legend, a mordant commentary on the American obsession with youth, features Hudson in what is possibly his finest performance, as a man cast in a part he despises. Hudson's sense of irony, then necessarily private, is now public. The great cinematographer James Wong Howe creates a sense of quiet horror through a skillful variation of lenses.

lightrees

In Memoriam : Clive Donner (1926-2010)

landscapes of the mind : A NEW FORM

pop!

Stephen O. Frankfurt titles for 'To Kill A Mockingbird'

As Elmer Bernstein's gentle theme is played note by note on a piano, the camera peers inside an old cigar box to reveal such childhood treasures as a broken watch, a pair of good-luck pennies, some marbles and a whistle. While a small girl hums, we see her hand using a crayon to draw a bird. So begins the film version of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), with its evocative and influential title sequence designed by Stephen O. Frankfurt.

Though born and raised in the Bronx, the Hollywood connection somehow always seemed to be in the background of Frankfurt, and in the early 1960's he got a call from producer Alan J. Pakula, who admired his commercials. Pakula asked him to try his hand at the main titles for "To Kill A Mockingbird.” Frankfurt worked closely with sound expert Tony Schwartz, his associate on many commercials. The Show Magazine critic led off his review of the film with the observation that "the titles that adorn ‘To Kill A Mockingbird' are about as striking as anything...yet devised.” Later when Charles Bludhorn of Gulf & Western's Paramount presented him with the "Rosemary's Baby" project, Frankfurt's cinema scope was greatly enlarged as he directed the entire campaign—titles and trailer, posters and all media advertising. ''Hollywood said we were breaking all the rules," Frankfurt points out now, "and I explained that was my aim precisely.” For "Rosemary's Baby,” essentially a horror film, Frankfurt decided that the most startling way to surprise his audience was by not showing the baby but by hearing it and superimposing an empty baby carriage on Mia Farrow's face. The copy says simply: "Pray for Rosemary's Baby.” Since then he has been associated with such eminently successful feature productions as "Network," "Arthur," "Emmanuelle," "Superman," "All That Jazz,” "Kramer vs. Kramer," "Sophie's Choice," "That's Entertainment,” and "Alien," totaling more than 55 in all.

Two Asteroids passed by Earth

Two asteroids, several meters in diameter and in unrelated orbits, passed within the moon's distance of Earth yesterday, Wednesday, Sept. 8.

Both asteroids were observable near closest approach to Earth with moderate-sized amateur telescopes. Neither of these objects had a chance of hitting Earth. A 10-meter-sized near-Earth asteroid from the undiscovered population of about 50 million would be expected to pass almost daily within a lunar distance, and one might strike Earth's atmosphere about every 10 years on average.

The Catalina Sky Survey near Tucson, Arizona, discovered both objects on the morning of Sunday, Sept. 5, during a routine monitoring of the skies. The Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusset, first received the observations Sunday morning, determined preliminary orbits and concluded that both objects would pass within the distance of the moon about three days after their discovery.

Near-Earth asteroid 2010 RX30 is estimated to be 32 to 65 feet (10 to 20 meters) in size and passed within 0.6 lunar distances of Earth (about 154,000 miles, or 248,000 kilometers) at 2:51 a.m. PDT (5:51 a.m. EDT) Wednesday. The second object, 2010 RF12, estimated to be 20 to 46 feet (6 to 14 meters) in size, passed within 0.2 lunar distances (about 49,088 miles or 79,000 kilometers) a few hours later at 2:12 p.m. PDT (5:12 pm EDT).

AURORA BOREALIS 08.09.2010

In Memoriam - PS

September's here again.....

Searching for Atticus Finch

by Adam Spector

In 2003, the American Film Institute named Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird as the top movie hero of all time, ahead of such stalwarts as James Bond and Indiana Jones. Curious choice, I thought at the time, and quickly forgot about it. In recent weeks, I have been pondering the Finch selection more and more. And it’s no mystery why it’s come to mind.

The furor regarding the “Ground Zero Mosque”has grown increasingly frightening. Newt Gingrich equated building this mosque to letting Nazis put up a sign next to the Holocaust Museum. He and others also compared it to building a Japanese center at Pearl Harbor. Several days ago a mob protesting the mosque shouted at a man wearing an Islamic style skullcap. The fact that this man was not actually Muslim was irrelevant; he just happened to be a convenient target for the mob’s hatred. Now a gubernatorial candidate in New York is calling for an investigation into the mosque’s financing.

The mob shouting at the “Muslim” brought to mind a pivotal moment in To Kill a Mockingbird. Atticus Finch, a lawyer in a small Georgia town, is defending Tom Robinson, a black man accused of molesting a white woman. This is rural Jim Crow Georgia in the 1920s, and the mere accusation against a black man is proof of guilt to most of the white community. Not content to wait for the trial, a white mob forms to lynch Robinson. An unarmed Atticus, who was with Tom at the time, would have had every reason to leave, but he doesn’t. He holds his ground until the mob leaves. Later, in court, Atticus proves that Tom could not have committed the crime. Unfortunately, the evidence does not matter to the all white jury.

On the surface, equating the To Kill a Mockingbird story to current events would be a stretch. Thankfully, with the mosque debate there’s no talk of anyone being lynched or not receiving a fair trial. But racism and hate are relative to their times. In the 1920s South, lynchings were commonplace. In fact, attempts to pass an anti-lynching law were defeated in the U.S. Congress through the 1930s. And it was much later before black people could serve on juries in the South or receive anything resembling a fair trial.

Over the years, racism and bigotry grew more subtle. While overt segregation may have dissipated, what remained were unspoken “gentlemen’s agreements” banning blacks, non-whites and other minorities from joining certain colleges, organizations, professions and communities. Eventually black people were allowed to move into certain areas, only for them to find that the whites had moved away.

In this century prejudice has changed again, largely due to the tragedy of 9/11. While it was a specific radical Islamic sect, Al-Qaeda, that carried out the attack, too many of us believe that all Muslims are guilty, or, at the very least, are suspicious. Sure, they can build a mosque, just not there, many people say, as if location was really the only issue. Indeed, protests have broken out not only near Ground Zero, but near proposed mosque sites all over the US.

What would Atticus Finch say if he were here? Perhaps he would point out that, as with Tom Robinson, the facts don’t support the fears. First of all, the mosque would not be at Ground Zero but a couple of blocks away. The World Trade Center site is hallowed ground, but is the whole neighborhood? According to Time magazine, there are “are two strip clubs that sit within a block of Ground Zero, but are not seen as a threat to the land's hallowed nature.” There’s also peep shows and an off-track betting house nearby. The proposed site itself was previously occupied not by the Twin Towers but by the Burlington Coat Factory.

More importantly, there is no evidence linking the group planning the Cordoba Initiative's Park51 project (an Islamic community center including a mosque but also having many other features, including a swimming pool), with any terrorist organization. In fact, the mosque’s imam, while hardly perfect, has often spoken out against terrorism and radical Islamic factions. Finally, there is already a mosque in the neighborhood, which has existed without incident and certainly without causing insult to the families of those who died on 9/11.

The specific details, as important as they are, are not the full measure of the case here, just as they weren’t for Atticus Finch. To Atticus, just as critical was Tom Robinson’s right to a fair trial. As he put it: “In this country, our courts are the great levelers. In our courts, all men are created equal. I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and of our jury system - that's no ideal to me. That is a living, working reality!” Atticus believed in Tom Robinson’s rights as an American and as a human being. To him those rights did not vanish because Tom was unpopular or because he was different. To Atticus it did not matter that his own community, including his friends and neighbors, were against him. What mattered to him was the Constitution, justice, and basic fairness. In another scene, he told his daughter, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view ... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.” Those words are sorely needed now.

While the current situation is far different from what Atticus Finch faced, his principles are just as relevant. If the rights delineated in the Constitution are to mean anything, they must apply to everyone, not just people we like or people who are like us. They must apply to all areas of America, not just places some think are suitable. They must apply even when times are difficult. They must apply even when they fly in the face of popular opinion. A friend of mine said it best: “Either we believe in freedom of religion or we don’t.” There’s no sometimes here.

In heated times, when we are afraid, it’s easy to lose sight of who we are and what values America holds sacred. One clear example is forcing Japanese-Americans into internment camps during World War II, but there are many other instances. Our country was founded in part by settlers looking to avoid religious persecution. The freedom to practice religion freely helped draw Catholics, Jews, and yes, Muslims to America. In many ways this freedom has been strengthened as legal discrimination has dissipated. But during a crisis, it’s all too easy to cower back in fear and to let paranoia trump justice and fairness. That’s when some Americans target other Americans whose only crime is sharing the same religion as the 9/11 terrorists. It’s times like these when I wish someone like Atticus Finch could remind us of what we should be standing for.

Obviously my wish will go unfulfilled. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Gregory Peck’s stout, resolute portrayal of Atticus made it clear to audiences that he was on the side of truth and justice. While the other characters in the movie may doubt Atticus, we sitting at home or in the theater cannot doubt Peck’s moral authority.

Real life, as always, is more complicated. There are those speaking out, whether it's reporters spotlighting how the Taliban is using the resistance to the mosque as a recruiting tool, or a few politicians, such as Jerrold Nadler and Orrin Hatch, willing to buck public sentiment. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been an unwavering advocate for the Park 51 project. Still, there’s no one out there with the force or moral clarity of Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch. I suppose that’s the tough part. It can’t be one man speaking up for the Constitution, be it the right to due process or the right to religious freedom. It must be all of us. The principles and convictions of Atticus Finch must exist not just on the screen but in our hearts, and, more importantly, in our actions.

Crack in the World (1965)

Crack in the World is an American science-fiction disaster movie filmed in Spain and released by Paramount Pictures.

An international consortium of scientists, operating as Project Inner Space in Tanganyika, Africa, is trying to tap into the Earth's geothermal energy by drilling a very deep hole down to the Earth's core. The scientists are foiled by an extremely dense layer of material at the boundary between the two. To penetrate the barrier and reach the magma below, they intend to detonate an atomic device at the bottom of the hole.

The leader of the project, Dr. Stephen Sorenson (Dana Andrews), who is (secretly) dying of cancer, believes that the atomic device will burn its way through the barrier, but the project's chief geologist, Dr. Ted Rampion (Kieron Moore), is convinced that the lower layers of the crust have been weakened by decades of underground nuclear tests, and that the detonation could produce a massive crack that would threaten the very existence of Earth.

The atomic device is used and Rampion's fears prove justified, as the crust of the Earth develops an enormous crack that progresses rapidly.

Sorenson discovers that there was a huge signature of hydrogen underground, which turned the small conventional atomic explosion into a huge thermonuclear one that was millions of times more powerful. Another atomic device is used in the hope of stopping the crack, but it only reverses the crack's direction. Eventually the crack returns to its starting point at the test site, and a huge chunk of the planet outlined by the crack is expected to be thrown out into space. Sorenson remains at the underground control center to record the event despite pleas by his wife Maggie to evacuate with the rest of the project staff. She and Rampion barely escape in time to observe the birth of a second moon.

Lucky Number Slevin (2006)

Lucky Number Slevin is a 2006 crime thriller film written by Jason Smilovic, directed by Paul McGuigan and starring Josh Hartnett, Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Ben Kingsley, Stanley Tucci, and Lucy Liu. Set in New York City, the plot focuses on the paths of Slevin Kelevra (Hartnett), Lindsey (Liu), two feuding crime lords known as The Boss (Freeman) and The Rabbi (Kingsley), and a mysterious hitman known as Mr. Goodkat (Willis).

Over the film's opening credits, two bookies are ambushed in separate locations and murdered, their ledgers stolen from their bodies by unseen killers. Elsewhere, a man walks out of a downtown building, and is shot by a sniper.

Later, at a bus terminal, a young man, Nick Fisher, is approached by a man in a wheelchair, Goodkat (Bruce Willis), who tells the story of Max. Around twenty years ago, Max bet borrowed money on a fixed horse race. The mobsters financing the fix discovered others betting on it, leading them to murder Max, his wife, and his son. Goodkat concludes the story and he promptly snaps the man's neck, and puts him in the back of a truck.

In New York City, Slevin Kelevra (Josh Hartnett) answers the door to his friend Nick Fisher’s apartment. He meets Nick’s neighbor Lindsey (Lucy Liu), who ducks into Fisher's apartment to borrow some sugar. Slevin relates that he is visiting after some recent bad luck and that when he arrived in New York he was mugged. He confesses he has not seen Nick, and that the apartment was unlocked when he arrived. Lindsey suggests that maybe Nick is missing, and that she and Slevin should investigate together later.

Moments later, after Lindsey leaves for work, Slevin is kidnapped by two henchmen. They take him to The Boss, a powerful crime lord who has mistaken Slevin for Nick. The Boss orders Slevin to repay Nick's debt. As an alternative to payment, he offers Slevin the option of murdering his Jewish rival Schlomo The Rabbi’s homosexual son, Yitzchok The Fairy, in retaliation for the Rabbi's apparent involvement in the death of the Boss' son. After he leaves, Goodkat steps out of the shadows, revealing his involvement with The Boss.

Slevin returns to the apartment and Lindsey shows up again. They plan to go on a date later that night, and after Lindsey leaves, Slevin is kidnapped again, this time by The Rabbi's gang. The Rabbi also mistakes Slevin for Nick and demands he pays Nick's sizeable debt to him. As Slevin leaves, Goodkat comes out from hiding in the Rabbi's penthouse.

Slevin returns to the Boss and agrees to kill The Fairy. The Boss gives him three days, and he recommends that Slevin approach The Fairy romantically, as he is a homosexual. Intercut with this conversation, Goodkat tells the Boss that he will kill Slevin and the Fairy when they are together, and that he will make it look like a suicide. Slevin and Lindsey go out to dinner, where they survey The Fairy. Excusing himself, Slevin approaches The Fairy in the restrooms and exchanges phone numbers for a future date. Returning home, Slevin spends the night in Lindsey's apartment.

In the morning, Slevin is hassled by Brikowski and his men, and is later picked up by The Boss' henchmen. As they leave, The Rabbi's henchmen are shown to have been shot. That night, Slevin visits The Fairy at his apartment and shoots him. Goodkat appears while The Fairy is dying and shoots him again. As Slevin goes to get the body of the young man from the bus terminal that Goodkat killed earlier, Goodkat kills The Fairy's bodyguards. They then get rid of the evidence by blowing up the apartment.

Goodkat visits the Boss, killing his bodyguards and taking him hostage, while Slevin kidnaps the Rabbi. Hours later, both the Boss and the Rabbi awaken, restrained to chairs in the Boss' penthouse. Their squabbles are interrupted by Slevin, who explains how the bookies were killed in order to find a name in each book who owed the bosses money: Nick Fisher. Slevin murdered the Boss's son, and Goodkat manipulated the resulting gang warfare and job offers to allow Slevin to gain access to both crime lords. Slevin reveals that the story of Max is that of himself and his father. Goodkat was hired to kill Slevin, but he spared him instead. It is also revealed that the Rabbi and the Boss were the ones who killed Max, and that Detective Brikowski killed Slevin’s mother. As payback, Slevin asphyxiates them in the same manner his father was killed. Meanwhile, Goodkat appears at the morgue where Lindsey works and shoots her to protect his identity. Later, Detective Brikowski is shot and killed by Slevin.

Sometime later at the bus terminal, Slevin looks up to see Lindsey. They embrace and it is revealed that Slevin knew Goodkat would try to kill her, so they staged her death. Looking around, Slevin sees Goodkat, and he convinces him to spare her and leave.

The film closes with Goodkat and the young Slevin shortly after Max's death. Goodkat takes Slevin into his car and tells him that it will be a long time before they can return to New York.