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Joan Rivers, Burt Lancaster, and Jerry Saltz Waltz Into a Bar…

We interrupt the regularly scheduled writing on Paris by Frau Kolb

For a message from the great pool party in the sky…

Read HERE: choice snippets from a posthumous interview with Burt Lanchaster (Via Sighle Lanchaster) and a moment of glittering reflection upon the work of comedy genius, entertainment goddess, the eternally amusing, Joan Rivers, these two heavenly talents, combine, as the subject of this meandering tribute to “The Swimmer,” Joan Rivers, and Everyone’s Favorite Art Critic… Two Giant Talents reaching from beyond the grave to touch and one living guide into the deep end of art a, “Sister Wendy in Swimming Trunks”.

critique-the-swimmer-perry35Last night we fell into a cult classic, “The Swimmer,”  directed in 1968 by Frank Perry and Sydney Pollack, starring Burt Lancaster, with Janet Landgard and Janice Rule in key roles, plays Ned Merrill, a man with only his swimming trunks left to lose. His mind, he lost sometime before the beginning of the film. He returns into a manicured world of Connecticut glamour. Mansions are backdrops, sets for petty dramas to unfold, poolside. Ned Merill (Burt Lancaster) is a fallen hero, come back from someplace beyond the conventional realm of understanding. He was dead to his friends, a stranger straggling from one former friend’s private pool to the next, for a quick dip in chlorinated symbols of renewal, prosperity.

He never had his own pool. He was a guest, a husband, a father, a lover of beautiful women, and a “suburban stud.” Yes! Burt Lancaster plays the role of a man losing it all with faultless grace. His face made mask-like by what he called, “The Grin,” a special smile, so difficult to read that it might be the emblem of archaic nobility.  Yes, Lancaster plays, “The Swimmer,” with the prowess of an mythical beast trapped in a maze of HORROR.  He is primal, an actor turned animal, so free and beautiful as to be beyond the pale of comparison with another male demigod in any American surrealist film.  This may be the most beautifully shot film of the 1970’s.  Lancaster, holds his mantel of acting genius, wearing only swim-trunks in the lead role of a “major motion picture!” Sighle reveals, the personal detail that the Academy award winning actor, he was going through a divorce, his marriage to my friend, Sighle’s mother, the alcoholic mother of his five children, was unraveling. His personal life was a perfect reflection on his distorted personal experience of reality as a Hollywood Star.

We were watching, “The Swimmer,” because Sighle Lanchaster or I mentioned Joan Rivers’s death, earlier and Sighle informed us that River plays a small role in the classic cult film. Yet, her performance, and her personal acting power, a strong presence able to match the greatness of Lancaster’s toned, tanned, athlete’s body in motion, diving, dripping, a fish in water.

Rivers plays a party person, poolside… looking perhaps for… and then he is there, flirting… bright blue eyes flashing, a vibrating magnet of seductive intention, pulling her toward something deep… maybe wet. She leans toward his masculine beauty, male perfection. She is confused, insecure. She wants to dive in, maybe… runaway with the mysterious swimmer, but then a man calls her possessively toward him, “Joan!” She turns away and The Swimmer drifts back toward the water. His strokes are perfect. Yet he comes crashing into reality as he emerges from the water, on the other side of the gigantic heated purified swimmer’s paradise, a private Olympic size pool.

It becomes all too clear that, he is not welcome by the owners of this particular mansion pool. They throw him out after he attempts to lay claim to a hand painted ice-cream truck, which was once his… from his home… toward which he swims on, running, walking hiking barefoot through fields adjoining the “five acre lots,” of the very wealthy, in a stratified town where middle class business owners are but servants, in a rich man’s world. The ultra rich, stand apart in a self celebrating sphere of private pool glee, are not OPEN to anyone unable to afford the entrance ticket, which requires access to a fortune.

The Swimmer, is shunned by most of his former friends.  He was once an advertising executive, married to a “Vassar girl,” presumably an heiress.   Those that still embrace him, have some meager  purpose for him, now that he is penniless, yet still handsome in his swim trunks, he commands a few invitations to bed and pitiful job offers.  His once-upon-a-time ardent mistress, an actress, of course… reveals that she was always faking it with him, even when they were intimate in her private backyard pool, she didn’t really like it or him. This revelation almost kills him, another well placed blow to his dying ego. She kicks him out. He keeps walking and swimming, being rebuked, rejected, and refused entry into all his old haunts.

Is he a ghost? Is he a man in a swimsuit that has perhaps escaped from a mental Institution? We do not know.  Yet, the film invites us to ask questions not only about the narrative and its arc, but also about our selves, our flimsy ambitions and wildest desires.  Are we all yearning for pool of our own… to “drown our sorrows,” in the the glittering liquidity of the affluent?

WE all know the feeling, the feeling of not being welcome, of being suddenly rejected, of running, of needing to get home, of looking for salvation by diving into the ocean of Voodoo, in cleansing pools of “healing waters,” bought at the nearby Santeria shop. We all seek a fountain of youth. We are all convinced that with enough money we might be able to buy eternal fame, fortune, and enduring happiness.  Yet… we all know that money creates as many problems at it solves.  When one is well off, one is often seen by others as a resource.  This can be exhausting… I imagine.

Several years ago, the New York Magazine Senior Art Critic, Jerry Saltz  wrote that he intended to “swim,” from one museum to the next, all summer, basking in the air conditioning, “immersing,” his self in great art, which is “refreshing,” to the overtaxed “aspirational,” visitors to great museums.  The critic, writes, “I spent a month dipping in and out of our city’s museums, like the character in John Cheever‘s classic short story, “The Swimmer.”  No mention of the Hollywood movie.  No mention of Burt Lancaster in his glorious fading Adonis swimsuit glory… no, no mention of Rivers and her bit part, in the beautifully shot and creative film, which tanked at the box office, none.

This film, “The Swimmer,” is a work of art.  You may agree with me that the possibility of immortality is encased in the degree to which one is able to dive into the making and venerating of the encapsulated timelessness that is art. Dance.  Writing.  Music.  Painting.  Sculpture.  Performance.  Film.  All is art if made by artists.  The artist seeks to create that which represents what is of deepest significance to the shallow and vain and deep, alike. LOOT with aspiration of being more than mere gold, but rather gold and jewels expertly fashioned into objects utilitarian and spiritual!  The artist seeks fulfillment in the creation of a ripple, a connection, a spark of emotion… some alteration of the status quo by which the dirt becomes clay and pigment becomes priceless porcelain, portraiture, landscape, framed significance, power on a pedestal, and The Artist is thus transformed from one that comes and goes, into one of the ever present immortals of memory and historic importance. For example, “Picasso!”

The artist’s greatest achievement maybe in the willingness to dive into the unknown.  It is a gel-like and glittering, preserving liquid, the ambrosia of the spirit, which gushes from a hidden spring, a common source.  Saltz nailed the feeling that I have when replenishing my “aspirational,” soul in the grand halls of great museum collections, it is one of refreshment, and charged inspiration to do, be, and enjoy the deeper end of the sparkling pools of loot, stores of endless splendor, pageantry, human achievement, the wars, the battles fought and made memorable with songs and soaring banners!  The blood splattered and marched into the mud… the forgotten mushroom cloud over Hiroshima… can be transformed into a silkscreened ornament for an elite abode.  Art is thought.  It maybe carved or poured, pasted or sanded, sprayed, etched, splattered, stained, dripped, and hammered.   It comes in all shapes, sizes, materials, and immaterial forms.  It is enduring, fleeting, transient, permanent, monumental, priceless, and/or “readymade,” for the trash and interchangeable with… other objects… as proven by the many replicas of Duchamp’s Urinal, the many “Fountain(s),” which are housed in Museums around the world.

What is art?  We don’t know.  The pool is too deep, murky.  Yet, we know that museums are more than merely amusing and that for Frau Kolb, the study of art… is something of an obsession… not on-par, of course, with the truly immersed, “Sister Wendy in Swim Trunks,” specialists which invest their entire lives in learning to LOOK deeper and share their insights with the rest of us, but in my own breezy focus, which tends to latch onto the absurdity of glorifying the golden and forgetting that we all shit.

Art is, for me, a refuge from the shallow, and yet I know that it often comes into being, BLING as a devotional playthings upon which wayward “Kings,” can see reflected their own image(s)…(to paraphrase Author Danto… sort of because I don’t really know what “Beyond the Brillo Box,” was about… other than being about modern art.) mirrored sculptures being a HUGE HIT every year when Art Basel, pitches its tent, in culture starved, Miami.  This “refreshment,” I crave remains a rarefied experience despite the fact that all major museums have FREE days and people of all kinds,  students especially, are welcome into the museum to gawk and experience a moment of ownership over the glorious… the preserved eternal… except The Barefoot (no shoes/no service) in swimming trunks… type.  Lunatics are not welcome, anywhere.  One must conform to a degree of convention to be allowed into the temple.

Joan Rivers, born Joan Alexandra Molinsky, on June 8th, 1933 in Brooklyn, was famous for many reasons. Plastic surgery became one of her claims to fame and like so many stars famous for… drinking, drugging, or otherwise obliterating themselves for the public’s pleasure, she was masterful in her execution of a collective fantasy. (Amy Winehouse lived up to her name).  Rivers flowed with the Hollywood ethic and became the unapologetic poster girl for plastic surgery.  She was an exceptional woman that could laugh at her own folly, tragedies, and invited others to laugh along with her at herself and anybody that wore the wrong outfit to the right party.

We have the pleasure of seeing her in “The Swimmer,” when she was a young woman, long before her excursions under the knife began. She was a goofy looking B E A U T Y a sweet Jewish American Lovely, with a charm that distinguished her from a universe of Hopefuls. She moved with TALENT we venerate.  The great comedians: George Carlin, Woody Allen,  Bill Cosby, and Richard Pryor were her early peers, playing the comedy club circuit in Manhattan’s West Village.  It is clear, seeing her, on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, courtesy of You tube, which was the professional moment that launched her career in television as as a talk show host, that she was at ease in her black cocktail dress and pearls, before all the surgeries began.  She was a blast of fresh air in the mostly male business of being willfully entertaining.  She was dexterous enough to pull back the curtain on Hollywood and show herself to be as naked as the next human playing Emperor, nude. She was masterful in the construction of a queen sized mask to protect herself until the day she died on the operating table.

We “pool,” our money and crave “cash flow.” The English language is replete with metaphors that equate money with water, “liquidity,” and being “flush.” Water, in turn, being synonymous in Judeo-Christian traditions with purification and cleanliness.  I’ve also heard of the “healing waters of the Ganges River.” When the old testament god gets angry, he washes humanity away with loads of water.  The women of Judea have long practiced ceremonial bathing to ensure a purity which Nietzsche found… amusing or significant… to say the least.  Protestants insist, “cleanliness is next to godliness.”  Rivers made no bones about the necessity for a youthful visage, vicious styling, and merciless materialism.  She was it. Aphrodite, Venus, was said to become a virgin again after every bath.  Rivers, sought the same level of miraculous transformation with every new procedure.  She pushed toward immortality.

Spirituality is freedom from physical limitations, from need.  Rivers never promised us a dip a deeper pool.  In fact, she appealed to the simple desire to laugh at misery, including one’s own.  She demonstrated a strength to find the humor in life’s tragedies, which distinguished her again and again.  She was true to her mantra and believed in herself, to the degree that she was willing to forge forward with her mission to “self improvement,” via surgery until the end.  In this mastery over her own course, Rivers embodies a type of divine purity that makes it easy to imagine her having a hoot at the never ending pool party in the sky.

WE want to know that there is more to life than this.  Yet… in the meantime, until we figure out what all this need for significance comes from… well… we might as well, have another drink, another kiss, another lover, and erase the worry about tomorrow or the next day or what happens when we die… with the colossal splash of a cannon ball executed from the greatest possible distance, the highest possible springing board.

In Joan River’s case, a dogged determination to ACT, to be seen, heard propelled her march to legend status. She shared herself with the public, from behind the increasingly tight mask of a youthful façade.  The importance of being physically attractive was a theme in River’s work.

Burt Lancaster’s beautiful physique made him the object of attention, when he was “discovered,” somewhat reluctantly acting in a short running Broadway play and cast in “The Killers,” (1946), a runaway hit, which launched his long career.   (I had the pleasure of seeing “The Killers,” and “Cris Cross,” at the invitation of Sighle Lancaster, at The Hammer Museum’s Billy Wilder Theater.)

Alcohol, which provides a thirst enhancing false nutrition of the body in exchange of a taste of oblivion, the little sink, on ice, a cup in which sins are dissolved, minimized, or dismissed until the hangover sets in an consequences become to big to bare, plays a major role in the drama of the American Dream. 90% of American Adults drink. According to Gabrielle Glaser, author of “Her Best-Kept Secret: Why Women Drink and  How They Can Regain Control,” American women guzzle oceans of white wine, in swimming pool sized vessels, with a gusto matched only by the girls of “Sex in the City,” downing Cosmopolitans with the aplomb of screen legends since the beginning of Tinsel Town projections of the relief from cares and the cultured delight to be found in spirits.

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What is it about alcohol that so entices? Lures?  Why is intoxicating the self such a… vital… part of Western Culture.  It is as though… we just can’t enjoy the show, without our “beer goggles.”

The film opens with, “The Swimmer,” Burt Lancaster running through forested sunlight, onto a pool terrace where he is warmly greeted by friends utterly surprised to see him, again. They are terribly, “hung over,” having had, “too much to drink, last night.” This story of poolside bars and perpetual drunken decadence in cycles of debauchery and cartoon redemption, hollow respectability, flaunted by those that manage to construct a fortress façade to hide their entirely human frailty.

Martinis, and other “Cocktails,” are offered to one and all accept children… who appear at key moments in the film to remind us… of what innocence might look like. A boy, left alone for the summer by his honeymooning mother, “swims,” across an empty pool with the imaginary support of The Swimmer. In another key scene, Our “Hero,” offers a girl (Janet Langard) her first sip of Dom Perignon, from the bar at a “Happening Party,” the two crash, after he plucks her like a ripe crocus, from a teenage gathering about another private pool, and runs with her—a leaping, prancing, show horse—a man, the actor, the star, over fifty years old and jumping over obstacles with a blond Barbie girl, face painted to look younger, at his side. Before long, she confesses, to having had enormous crush on him years ago, when she babysat his… no longer so young… daughters. Yet… she reveals herself to be completely shallow, an accident waiting to happen, when he tries to dive in for a kiss, with worn out promises of love and protection, she leaves him to his fate. “I have a boyfriend,” she suddenly reveals, explaining that she met her new lover (a very jealous fellow… with real problems), “on the computer,” (how progressive!) before running off, back to her peers, presumably.

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“The Swimmer,”  is linked, in my mind, to “Under the Volcano,” by Malcom Lowry, a book on an alcoholic man’s last day among the living. He surrenders to the abyss that is obsessive alcohol abuse.  He sinks, dying from an unquenchable thirst for a reason live, the soul of the abyss is a lack of faith in goodness, a replacing of authentic values with false idols… glittering golden calfs held high until they, too are melted down and used for some other soon forgotten purpose.  Some sacred objects bob and float, emerging from oblivion to be held dear for eternity.

Yes… we all know the myth of Narcissus and his ever-locked relationship with a body of water. I think of David Hockney’s paintings of swimming pools... evoking the placid purified depths of ambition and the filtering systems that keep some places segregated, entirely WHITE… fenced in… Swimming pools, splashy and full of water that one can not drink, but which cool the body and promote a feeling of well being in those that dream of swimming forever and never needing to reapply sunscreen.

“A River of Swimming Pools,” a wait.

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On Authenticity in Django Unchained

“Antebellum blaxploitation spaghetti western… what’s not to like?”
Lawrence Swan: New York City, Visual Artist

LOS ANGELES: Sunday, February 17, 2013

In my book, race is mostly a distraction.  So, I was planning on avoiding Django Unchained, the current controversial film by Quentin Tarantino.  The film Starring Jamie Foxx, Leonardo DiCaprio pushes the hot button of RACE.  Yet, Tarantino delivers a brand of movie that I actually enjoy.  He tells stories of revenge.  Stories, old and mythic in their narrative power. His climatic scenes are tomato ketchup bang ups with as much splatter and drip as in a Jackson Pollack action painting.

The explosive violence of Tarantino, felt appropriate suddenly as Christopher J. Dorner, 33, former LAPD officer was being hunted by increasingly gun-happy force.  The accidental shooting of two female delivery truck drivers and a young male surfer were among the news stories circulating during the frightening man-hunt.  Dorner’s smiling image, in association with his rambling Facebook manifesto, in which he expressed the intention to commit acts of violence coupled his navy reserve past, and stories of youthful altruism in the name of “integrity,” had everyone nervous, watching, waiting to find out what would be the outcome of the impending show-down.  Propelled, perhaps in part by the intensity of this news story, we took refuge in the RAVE cinema, movie theater, stopping at the bar, to confer with our favorite bartender.

“OH!” She said when we told her we were there to see Django Unchained.  She told us the story of her Christmas Day at the RAVE Cinema, where Tarantino spent the evening grilling movie-goers on their experience of the film.  “He talked to my mom (a mature African American woman),” she said.  “He wanted to know what she thought of certain parts of the movie.  He wanted to know IF she found it, you know… racist.”  Apparently, not since the lady replied she was sorry to admit she’d fallen asleep during the scenes in question, “It being Christmas Day and all…”

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We were touched to hear of Tarantino’s commitment to his film and interest in the film’s impact upon viewers.  This intense caring about the quality of one’s product is a measure of “integrity.”  The film was true to Tarantino’s storytelling style.  It featured, as a number of his films do, the extensive and fluid use of the dreaded, “N-WORD!”  This is a word, I have been cautioned NOT to use by people whose intelligence I admire.  Thus…

The controversy can be contained in a nutshell with famed director’s  Spike Lee’s published comment, He told Vibe magazine, “I can’t speak on it ’cause I’m not gonna see it. The only thing I can say is it’s disrespectful to my ancestors, to see that film.”

The notion that seeing Django Unchained, is “disrespectful,” to anyone’s ancestors is well… silly.  The film revolves around the mutual respect and affection between black and white people as much as it turns with the images of horror and savagery among the owners and exploiters of plantation property. Set is in the antebellum south, and telling the story of Django, a high-IQ BLACK man that earns the respect and friendship of a German bounty hunter, movingly played by Christoph Waltz.

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The movie begins with slaves fettered in a chain gang and being transported by two cruel slave traders from one location to another, “somewhere in Texas,” the film takes OFF with a BANG and before you know it, the German bounty hunter character, a dentist by training, but a professional killer by trade are business partners and treating each other with brotherly affection.  The bounty hunter treats the former slave like family, teaching the later to read and training him in a lucrative IF morally suspect profession.

The sale of flesh… Prostitution, Bounty Hunting, and  Slavery…  The HORROR The Horror of American History is one which I have steadfastly avoided, lest it besmirch my cultivated LOVE of our country. I see the world as full of opportunity and America as a place where the dream becomes reality.  Our president’s story is unique to this nation long divided and yet united in the potential for change.  America is the nation most flexible and progressive in the construction of new opportunities for alternate histories to flourish and provide images that elevate the HORROR of history into the song of victory.

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Jamie Foxx is majestic in his representation of the anti-hero avenger.  Waltz, the Austrian-German actor, nominated for an Oscar award for his performance as dentist turned bounty hunter and true friend to Django, is the ideal of the German town dweller unfettered by nationalist propaganda and committed to ideas of autonomy and self-determination.  Samuel Jackson is spot-on as the evil head of the Candy-Land domestics.  His paternal intimacy with Calvin Candy, Leonardo D’Caprio’s character, calling the later into the library for, “a talk,” over cognac.

Kerry Washington, effectively plays Broomhilda Von Shaft, (Conceived as the great-great-great grandmother of the 1970‘s blaxpoiltation films).   German speaking love-object propelling Django forward into the Heart of Darkness, the epicenter of evil, Candy-Land plantation.  Washington’s Afro-Angelic beauty shines as the movie hero’s trophy, his holy grail, in the film.  She, alone, among the films protagonists remains unblemished by the blight of committing violence.   We know from previous Tarantino films that he has no issue with portraying females as violent.  (See: Invisibility in Django Unchained: Broomhilda in Chains by Eisa Nefertari Ule at EisaUlen.com for another perspective on this issue.)  Yet, Broomhilda is rescued rather than dispensing retribution.  She applauds, her man’s prowess, and rides off into the night at his side, at the film’s end.

This female prize is NEW to film in that African American women are just now arriving at being the LOVE OBJECT!  Film history is NOT replete with women of color represented as trophy wives, worth the FIGHT.  The diminutive Washington is a powerhouse actress.  Watching her hold her own among the BIGGER than LIFE macho men that made this film, in the video of the press conference for this film.  “She took a beating!” Says Tarantino of the actress’s dedication to film veracity.  She withstood DiCaprio’s pummeling grip for two days of shooting in order to accurately transmit the horror the horror of the American  slave experience.

The complaint that Django fails to provide a “Authentic,” African American personal is the theme of “Still too Good, Too Bad or Invisible,” by Nelson George, filmmaker and author of “Blackface: Reflections on African Americans and the Movies.”  My feeling is that Hollywood is in the business of taking us where we WISH reality might GO!  The films are about ESCAPE and like a runaway slave, I am branded by the LOVE of a good yarn, well spun, and told by master storyteller like Homer and perhaps,  Tarantino’s Django Unchained is the new Odyssey for a NEW WILD WEST, mythology unfolding and ALIVE.

Dorner, the former officer gone mental,  a raging murderer, was identified as toast in a cabin north of Los Angeles, near Big Bear.  He didn’t, I presume, get to make contact with Charlie Sheen in time to prevent being fried for pointing the finger at the LAPD.   I’m not sure I believe Dorner was fighting for a true cause.  His mission, ultimately, would have been better served by civic activism, rather than violence.

At the end of the day, the film stands  a great American film, a LOVE story of explosive alternative historical potential.  In other words, “BANG! Bang! BANG!” Django Unchained is a HIT in my little black book.

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A BURT LANCASTER Virgin

11 May 2013

Los Angeles California

Oh Lucky ME!  Last week, on Saturday night I went on a date, to see not one but two monumental Burt Lancaster/Robert Siodmak Noir films at the Billy Wilder Theater in the Hammer Museum.  We were invited to do so by the Hammer Museum for their “Centennial Celebration,” and I was with a dear set of friends intimately associated to the Lancaster estate.  (Dear close-friends WE love, very much.)

Before last night, I was A BURT LANCASTER Virgin.  Yes.  It is true.  I had not really fully gotten sucked into the phenomenon of this classic Hollywood film STAR.  Sure, I’d seen him in, “The Crimson Pirate,” and other such films but NEVER before on the BIG SCREEN and BURT is BEAUTIFUL BIG!  OH YEAH!  What a freakin’ HUNK!  I mean the only other man that well… frankly… anyway… let me get a grip.

After a brief drink then a fast jaunt across the road, we slipped into our reserved seats.  The host launched the evening a quick introduction to an engaging film scholar and author, Alan K. Rode.  He introduced, “The Killers” with wit and verve, making the audience chuckle before the film played.  With this particular film gem, Burt Lancaster went from unknown to Hollywood STAR for every good reason.  Adonis had nothing on him.  His taunt trained athletic energy, the acrobat’s concentration, and the obscenely fluid ease of his movement… AH!  WE all wish to be so fit, so right.

The-Killers-Lancaster-01He played a boxer gone off, knuckles broken, lured by easy money into the wrong set, and reeled in by a breathtakingly beautiful Fem-Fatal played by a long, big-eyed, previously undiscovered stunner —Ava Gardner— to take part in an ugly payroll heist.  The film unfolds in dazzling flashbacks, as the insurance claim detective pieces together the puzzle of the anti-hero’s violent death.  In other words: classic film noir. The story is utterly believable, gritty, eternal and elemental tragedy.  (The film is based on a short story by Ernest Hemingway.)  We go along for the ride even though we know it won’t end well from the start.  We, audience, mirror the protagonist’s experience of being lured into a race to hell.  Yet, at the end of the film, we have the satisfaction of resolution. THE LAW firmly upheld and evil woman caught in her own net of deception.  Ah!  How delightful!

The second film, after a brief intermission, and a little more relevant film talk from the passionate and funny film scholar, Rode, “Criss Cross,” a less successful yet watchable film with a lot of the same story elements.  Lancaster’s performance was impeccable.  He held the film together, the other actors revolving around him like planets.  In the film his character, a easily forgettable type IF it were not glorious Burt in the tepid role, glows with innocent infatuation for an evil prize, a woman of little worth, a tramp, a moll, a gangster’s wife that was once his wife.  The yucky plot-line of good boy meets BAD girl and loses life for love is not poignantly told in “Criss Cross,” which was a little slapped together and claustrophobic, even though it does have some beautiful (…and also early arial…) footage of old LA, with the trolley cars and union station figuring prominently.  “The Killers,” however is a hard act to follow because it is, at first viewing, one of the masterpieces its genre, along with Casablanca, and the Maltese Falcon, other noir classics that one can not speed by, one must stop and enjoy these delicious golden noir films.

The pleasure of seeing these fabulous old film(s) at the Billy Wilder Theater is intense.  YOU MUST make plans to see a Burt Lancaster film in this theater before the end of the series.  Last night was so great, that IF I had had to fly in from New York to experience seeing “The Killers,” and “Criss Cross,” large, on the “silver screen,” with great S O U N D, I would not hesitate.   That I have this pleasure at the Billy Wilder Theater without needing to get on a plane is truly awe and some.   By the way, the MUSIC! the score for “The Killers,” which drove home the story and was later, purloined by the composers of the Dragnet, television show for that program’s theme, for which there was,  “legal action,” later.  (All this, and more, I learned from listening to the scholar that introduced the two films.)  Understandable because the music was one of the many factors combined which make, “The Killers,” an unforgettable film.

Much Love,

Frau Kolb

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“Noah,” Biblical Dude

Dearest Talkinggrid Regulars,

1 April 2014 -7 April 2014

Here is a meditation on taste… How do you feel about the guilty pleasure of a “BAD,” Movie? Is a “Bad,” movie akin to junk food, a poor substitute to authentic nutrition?

Frau Kolb is a total snob when it comes to films. “Noah,” was G R E A T as a parody of dysfunctional Malibu living. The film’s total lack of respect for the biblical narrative’s gravitas, and the significance of LAW, authority… punishment… all foreign ideas to the Hollywood mind. The film features: two herbal medicine junky parents, on the brink of a great flood… could be menopause or a midlife crisis… regardless the two, are battling. The are “way too stressed,” by the “evil,” meat eaters. Differences in diet, from gluten-free to vegan being an “AWESOME issue,” in California, where this ancient flood takes place in a studio lot and computer chop-chop room, keeping a KOSHER KITCHEN versus an only ORGANIC GARDEN may be a never ending source of Empty Hollywood “D R A M A!”

In Los Angeles, affluent people often shop at Whole foods… which… might fit in an ark… if you drugged the electronic animals… the cast of Noah dressed in anachronistic contemporary classic movie attire, over act their way from one scene to the next flood of bad… evil… greedy trashy leather and hair extensions flaunting, trendy MAD MAX rival sibling… Ruler of the damned, hitching a ride, wounded, inside the cartoon ark, adrift in the middle of a bad plot and stupid invented biblical dribble. The family of surf sipping fashion cast-aways, waiting for “the BIG wave…” The moral of the story: DO NOT MURDER your twin granddaughters! OK, Dude?

Do NOT set up your father to be murdered by your blood lusting uncle. OK??? He will be Shakespearean in his on-stage twitching rage and bristling Anglo-Irish… what is that stupid… oh yeah… another movie packed with longhairs… the one about a lost Ring… cramp. Moral number 15 of the story: keep kosher or dear ol’ god won’t give the snakeskin blessing… wait what? This doesn’t make any sense… well the Old Testament didn’t make a whole lot of sense did it??? Slapped together from yarns, threads, ancient Hebrew, ancient tongues, mysterious… powerful!

Not a JOKE. NOT FUNNY, really.

Noah is supposed to be serious and it really shocked me that I was the only one laughing throughout this farce of a film.

I dig the part about the groovy garden with a tempting tree and handy slithering salesman: SATAN.

noahThe NOAH story told by Hollywood, puts Russell Crow in baggy denim trousers looking the part of a frazzled Los Angeles “off-his-meds,” unstable angry husband/DAD… an overworked father of three, a rushed and post industrial worker transported via lack of historical knowledge to an imagined past… very strange… belching stacks, polluted environment… all very LA NOW. His wife,the dashing Jennifer Connelly, wears the organic hand stitched mantel of plastic trash bags left over from the set of Waterworld, another underwater Hollywood disaster picture, gone way wrong… The hyper unimaginative costume designer got the LOOK of a Prius Driving power-yoga-stressed out- BEACH queen MOM, perpetually aggravated from fighting traffic, on the Pacific Coast Highway, wearing her athletic gear and lambs skin lined bulky flat surf boots, despite claim to be “almost vegan…” yet LOVIN’ Skinny Margaritas… characteristic of the “laid back,” amazingly aggressive and self-centered inhabitants of one of the world’s most exclusive enclaves of wealth… sending out the sun-kissed image of Wind-Whipped Anime hair… too much.

Laughter erupting at the illogical slap-dash raft of a bloated “electronically mastered,” logic challenged, folly… perfect for those that love their entertainment ABSURDLY all Caucasian and without a touch of truth… those that crave twisted, computer animated nonsense… I mean, what is with the talking rocks??? Why do all Hollywood brain busters have to have a giant robot folding over upon itself, a computerized Character, which is sent in to save a floundering script and pointless flick from sinking. Noah, a movie made for those that image prehistory in terms of a simpler time; when wives were, animals, children, and all else were to be subject to a very macho and temperamental LORD; white DUDE.

Happy April FOOL’s Month, to those that, join me in celebrating Hollywood’s power to draw in audiences out of their, presumably, cozy homes to the public view situation of the Movie Palace or Theater… How do they manage to get humans to give up hard earned dollars to see pretty European California pampered brand name faces perform empty renditions of what might be our most sacred religious documents?

Imagine: a BIG WAVE wipes Malibu off the earth and then there is NO MORE TRAFFIC.

Unfortunately, Noah did not have a surfboard strapped to the top of the ark… It would have added extra––spice––to the already hyped-up Hollywood version… after all, they took so many liberties with the established biblical narrative.

An alternate title for the film; “Noah Does Malibu,” and Mel Brooks really must make his own version of this hilarious jazzy Hollywood spun cheap and flashy pimp of biblical electric neon impossibly pretty Douglas Booth… fruity, really… and unbearable acting from the biblical British sounding princess, Emma Watson, with “healing wisdom,” from Wholefoods on Lincoln blvd, this version of Noah is loosely spun upon the biblical patchwork of polyester and acrylic twine costumes.

Humans: we love retelling an old myth… making it resonate with a new audience which doesn’t care that denim did not exist until the late 1800’s and that it is a uniquely American fashion choice. The people of the ancient Greco-Roman world told many versions of the same stories about their mythological heroes.

The fact that denim has become a possible toga for today’s international male, around the world, is testament to the imperialist nature of this nuclear family, we could-all-be-cousins, one family and its adopted sister… and their twin daughters… weird. Yet… perhaps… the film is but a mere joke, a comedy… destined to be erased when the digital libraries fail after the upcoming END of THE World!! ! IF you find yourself laughing at the silly slapstick rendition of the prehistoric manifestation of the miraculous, know that Frau Kolb is not laughing at you, rather with you, in this tenuous case.

Enjoy the “Shadows on the Cave Wall!” and please pass the fake butter flavor on salty GMO pop-corn.

Thank you,

Frau Kolb

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FIVE STAR FILM: THE GRAND HOTEL BUDAPEST: ZUBROWKA

 The Grand Budapest Hotel, New Film Release by Wes Anderson

April 2014

009-the-grand-budapest-hotel-theredlistWe slid into our plush pleather reclining seats having ordered cocktails and potstickers, to be brought by one of the locals. Then we relaxed, laid back, and took a little trip back to another time, in another, powerfully familiar, world. We rode the film’s fantastic train of lacy thought deep into its delicate yet surprisingly un-flighty core of solid historically correct material and manners, which render this film watch-worthy, delightful. A loyal and true, honest and steadfast pleasure; each time gaining speed with a whipping swish, a rumbling, passage, a driving… light rhythm… a refined ride deep into the decidedly slow paced, well knit, lovely crafted, and the earnest surprisingly linear delivery of intimate detail in a period piece set in a gentler… or perhaps NOT so gentle, world at the brink of WAR. There is the marvelously creepy Assassin, nailed by Willem Dafoe and the brutal train stopping paper searching police… A strange, lingering film with haunting hints of berry special… it was, , intoxicating to behold and to take in, to watch the film meander its perfectly planned course… in a subtly homoerotic… a stunning romp through a fantasy Europe of a bristling Germanic Pizzaz, where a friendship between a man, “M. Gustave H., the legendary concierge at a famous European hotel between the wars,” and a boy, Zero Moustafa, binds the twirling sparkling jeweled core of this finely woven blend of fact and fiction, authenticity and originality.

Grand is the cast of the the film, we enjoyed. Short appearances by Bill Murray, Adrien Brody, Jude Law, Lea Seydoux, a solid and sweet performance by Edward Norton as the fastidiously correct official and Master Mind Jail Bird: Harvey Kietel …Saoirse Ronan, is the cake baking bicycle peddling innocent that saves the protagonist from confinement via dexterous baking skills and a passion for the LOBBY BOY, Zero Moustafa.

We have to expect brilliant performances, by eternally resplendent jewel, Anglo-Saxon goddess, Tilda Swilton and (Hyper Refined British Dreamboat) Ralph Fiennes, we sank into a the eye candy sweet confection of a film, perhaps not Anderson’s “finest,” work yet… it maybe… indeed a masterfully crafted piece of film legend, an authentic masterpiece, a genuine glittery jewel of cinematography! I expect it to win every award. It should.

The Grand Budapest is a charming film. It speaks the language of the international elite with a show stopping performance by every ART CHAT and Muse News Reader and commentator… Thank you for stopping by and for checking in and for the steady contributions of significant support.

Just a little whiff of L’Air de Panache; Pure Musk… Ah!

The setting, a nonexistent country east of somewhere in Europe, Zubrowka, “inspired,” or based on the writings of the tragically romantic author and poet, Stefan Zweig, who committed suicide in protest of the war…

Acclaimed English painter: Michael Taylor, created the prop painting at the center of the playful film’s jolly little clockwork perfect plot.

Ralph Feines is unwaveringly dreamy… the perfect concierge, inviting… admittedly… seductive. You understand, the adoration, the admiration, and the respect people feel for the caring, brave, and loyal protagonist.

The Lobby Boy, deftly acted by Tony Revolori, the “helpful,” boy, who travels with Gustave, in the capacity of “Personal Valet,” with a stolen painting… containing a will which… I won’t tell you any more, you really want to see this beautiful light bright and intelligent dazzler, while you can catch it at select theaters NOW.

Tilda Swilton is absolutely amazing. She dazzles the eye and plays the role of a vain as a frail (Thomas Pynchon’s Classic novel, “The Crying of Lot 49,” a la Turns & Taxis… all powerful heiress of an unspeakably vast fortune, mother to the most despicable brat.

(Earlier this week I had the twisted pleasure of seeing a terrible film, “Noah,” and utterly twisted telling of the Old Testament tale. Is nothing sacred?)

The film Noah, depicted the Prophet as a contemporary Malibu Hippie… well, not really but kind of… (read more here).

In the film we return in time to a world someplace on the edge of reason, more polite and correct… yet “Mad,” if a little safe, a cozy classic. The bubbly flows… even the assassin has style… leather clad Monster.

Wes Anderson

The Royal Tenenbaums was the first Wes Anderson film we really fell for. The colors and depiction of a wonderfully quirky blended family, living in a rambling book filled brownstone somewhere posh in Brooklyn… with stories braided within the margins of still deeper and more intricate tales… the prominent other voice in film-making enjoying a long career as one of Hollywood’s best alternate directors, his refined sensibility, always on display and dominating the film’s development. Spinning, dazzling, delicious and sweet this film stands out among the many and yet is not… well, substantial enough… perhaps. Yet, here I am inspired to write about this film in the middle of the night just hours after seeing it.

Protagonist: Gustave, a metro male, a character from in another unwritten, imaginary version of Alfred Hitchcock’s… homage or pillage of the Oriente Express: the train, the pace…the old world elegance teetering on icy cold mountains of traditional notions of what is correct and which is simply… comic relief the cliche of blades and miniature hacksaws baked into exquisite pastry deliciously fits this film to a tea… a little Hitchcock inspired ride through an alternate reality, where the gay and liberal aristocratic spirit that joined artistic, the anarchist, and the refuge in… The BIG PICTURE beauty of Art and its need to be rescue, re-homed, adopted by its, ultimately rightful heir… the picture at the center of the film, that art need not save the world but that it might be a reason for someone otherwise or merely apparently insignificant to muster the courage with which to face life.

Historically astute… pushing all kinds of elevator buttons, taking a ride up and down the frosty hillside, just ahead of the horrible gun toting assassin… AND don’t let me get started on Jeff Goldblum!

Owen Wilson, plays only a minor role… yet, we all know how Frau Kolb feels about Owen… right? Frau Kolb LOVES OWEN… I met him and Wes Anderson, briefly one night at Hals… I sat behind him on a plane to Maui, not long after… I dream of directing O. in a few films… Ah!

Overall: I wish more films would have this delicate honesty and whimsical literate approach. This is a film, I will see again. This is one I will add to my tiny collection of treasured films.