Uncouth Reflections

Movie Poster Du Jour: “The Green Slime”

Posted on August 31, 2014 by Fabrizio del Wrongo

Fabrizio del Wrongo writes:

Related

I love the theme song.

Posted in Commercial art, Movies | Tagged Film, Kinji Fukasaku, Movie Posters, movies, The Green Slime | 4 Comments

Showtune Saturday: “Doin’ What Comes Naturally”

Posted on August 30, 2014 by Eddie Pensier

Eddie Pensier writes:

An outtake from Annie Get Your Gun (1950), with Judy Garland, before she was fired by MGM and replaced by Betty Hutton. Garland had clashed with original director Busby Berkeley, and retaliated against his perfectionism by showing up late and missing calls. (Berkeley himself would be replaced by two additional directors.) There’s dialogue in the beginning: the music starts at 1:50.

Judy seems oddly subdued in this clip, although it’s almost a masterpiece of subtlety compared to the googly-eyed hamming of Hutton. It’s a song that has to be taken on its own terms: for lyrical wit and cleverness and a bloody-minded earworm of a tune, with absolutely no other redeeming value whatsoever.

Related

Atypical Neurotic shared another Judy Garland moment from Summer Stock.

Posted in Movies, Music, Performers | Tagged annie get your gun, betty hutton, Busby Berkeley, irving berlin, Judy Garland, showtune saturday | 1 Comment

KiMo Theater, Albuquerque

Posted on August 29, 2014 by Sir Barken Hyena

Sir Barken Hyena writes:

More Southwestern peregrinations. Going from the works of God to the works of man, I give you the KiMo Theater. I’ll let the pictures do the talking.

Posted in Architecture, Movies, Travel | 4 Comments

“The Cosmopolitans” (2014)

Posted on August 28, 2014 by Blowhard, Esq.

Blowhard, Esq. writes:

Because I am ‪#‎hardcore‬, I stayed up until midnight so I could watch Whit Stillman’s potential series pilot THE COSMOPOLITANS as soon as it went live on Amazon. The show opens with Joan Osborne singing “What Becomes of the Broken Hearted” over picture postcard views of Paris and titles written in a handmade French art deco font — it’s like the man has a direct line into the pleasure centers of my brain.

Starring Chloë Sevigny, Adam Brody, Carrie MacLemore, Jordan Rountree, and Adriano Giannini (the first three of whom are Stillman vets), the show mixes the group dynamics of METROPOLITAN with the lovelorn ex-patriates of BARCELONA, delivered with Stillman’s arch charm and droll humor. I particularly liked the inclusion of an older Italian as a more sophisticated European rake to mock and needle the American boys. Much like the girls trying to improve the boys in DAMSELS IN DISTRESS, it’s almost as if Stillman is trying to teach American men his Euro-inflected patrician-WASPy version of Game: wear a blazer or suit, go talk to the pretty blonde across the room, and don’t forget to dance. (The kinds of things previous generations learned watching French New Wave films, in other words.) My only complaint is that we see little of Sevigny, a defect that will no doubt be remedied if the show goes to series.

Related

The New Yorker’s Richard Brody on THE COSMOPOLITANS.
I gushed about DAMSELS IN DISTRESS here.
Fabrizio on girliness.

Posted in Movies, Television | Tagged Adam Brody, Adriano Giannini, Carrie MacLemore, Chloë Sevigny, French New Wave, Jordan Rountree, Paris, Whit Stillman | 8 Comments

Fisher Valley, Utah

Posted on August 28, 2014 by Sir Barken Hyena

Sir Barken Hyena writes:

On another stretch of my flaneur’s trail, I timed my entry into this magical place to the rising sun. And, I discovered the panoramic mode on my camera.

Posted in Photography, The Good Life, Travel | 2 Comments

Architecture Du Jour: The Russian Izba

Posted on August 28, 2014 by Blowhard, Esq.

Blowhard, Esq. writes:

The traditional Russian izba, a “peasant house” built of interlocking ax-hewn logs, was for centuries the most widespread form of house found in the Russian countryside. A typical farmstead would consist of an izba, a long-built barn and hay shed, either attached to or separated from the main building, and a kitchen garden. Izby were constructed of many shapes and sizes, but they shared similar internal layouts.

…

Izby were constructed using hand axes, adzes, or knives, but not saws, and wood pegs rather than nails (metal was expensive). Building one was a communal effort, celebrated with feasts that were held at significant stages in the construction process…Most surviving izby, some up to five hundred years old, are now found only in outdoor museums.

— Building Without Architects: A Global Guide to Everyday Architecture

Related

Sir Barken checks out the indigenous architecture in New Mexico.

Posted in Architecture | Tagged izba, Russia, traditionalism, vernacular architecture | 8 Comments

Silver City, New Mexico

Posted on August 27, 2014 by Sir Barken Hyena

Sir Barken Hyena writes:

On a recent road trip that may or may not have included scouting candidates for the new Lady Barken, I detoured a bit to take in Silver City, New Mexico. Though not far over the border from Arizona, you know you are in New Mexico from the architecture alone. The landscape is beautiful high grassland, framed by piney mountains and cut by rocky canyons. It’s a worked land too, where ranches and prosperous little towns abound, unlike the Arizona side which is mostly poverty stricken Apache reservation land.

Silver City itself escapes the fate of the boutiqued resort town, common for small towns in the Southwest and Rockies, simply by being too far from ski slopes, or lakes and beaches. It’s prime asset is incredible air, space, light, and peace and quiet. Not even the students at Western New Mexico University are rowdy, though the college provides a nice Spanish Colonial tower to offset this scenic little town. Even the remains of the tailing pile from silver mining is remote and unseen from town. Here’s a sampling of the sights:

Posted in Architecture, The Good Life, Travel | 11 Comments

Village Du Jour: Ouray, Colorado

Posted on August 27, 2014 by Sir Barken Hyena

Sir Barken Hyena writes:

Posted in Architecture, The Good Life, Travel | 1 Comment

Capitulation

Posted on August 27, 2014 by Fabrizio del Wrongo

Fabrizio del Wrongo writes:

A Russian who immigrated to Paris in the early 1920s, Dimitri Kirsanoff was above all an avant-gardist. However, he wasn’t above employing Griffith-style melodrama when it suited his purposes. In his “Menilmontant,” a brief, richly volatile work about a young mother trying to make her way in Paris, the director uses brisk, arrhythmic cutting, odd camera angles, and superimpositions to reflect the unbalanced mental state of his heroine. Though the story plays as though it’s been run through a Cuisinart, somehow it holds together emotionally. This is due in no small part to the exquisite acting of Kirsanoff’s wife, Nadia Sibirskaia. She turns in one of the great performances of the silent cinema — comparable in vividness to Falconetti’s Joan or the best work of Lillian Gish. This bench sequence, perhaps the most placid bit in the picture, is the moment everyone remembers. Charity, and the conflict of pride and capitulation that so often accompanies its receipt, has probably never been more lucidly presented on film. It’s like a Victorian vignette brought to life.

Related

Pauline Kael once cited “Menilmontant” as her favorite movie.
Movie buffs have sometimes debated the development of rapid cutting. The history books credit it to the Soviets. But how to explain its presence in early films directed by Abel Gance and in the work of certain White Russian expats?
You can watch the whole of “Menilmontant” on YouTube: