#Carry On Dick (1974)

[thezombiegeekinthehawaiianshirt]

[blorb-el]

happy pride as a present here is a non-exhaustive compilation of ways precrisis clark has carted bruce around from the 50s to the 80s. sources and artists under readmore

[row 1] it's the early days, perhaps they're not comfortable yet with pda: wf 108, 1960, pencils dick sprang, inks sheldon moldoff well they sure got over that fast: wf 118, 1961, artists same as prev strong arms to show off husband and son: wf 135, 1963, artists same as prev

[row 2] belt hold: wf 80, 1956, pencils dick sprang, inks stan kaye cheek to cheek: wf 251, 1978, pencils george tuska, inks vince colletta, colors jerry serpe burrito: wf 172, 1967, pencils curt swan, inks george klein

[row 3] kitten scruffed: justice league of america 144, 1977, pencils dick dillin, inks frank mclaughlin, colors anthony tollin third wheeling: justice league of america 144, same as above like a sack of groceries: wf 257, 1979, pencils dick dillin, inks frank mclaughlin, colors gene d'angelo

[row 4] bridal, manila bruce style: wf 128, 1962, pencils and ink by jim mooney bridal batman style: wf 281, 1982, pencils irv novick, inks frank chiaramonte, colors carl gafford instinctive bridal catch: wf 266, 1981, pencils rich buckler, inks bob smith, colors gene d'angelo

[row 5] clarks hand is Where: wf 267, 1981, pencils rich buckler, inks dick giordano, colors gene d'angelo bruce has been mind controlled and given superpowers and they're.....'wrestling': wf 109, 1960, pencils curt swan, inks stan kaye piggyback ride: wf 224, 1974, pencils dick dillin, inks vince colletta [should be noted that this one is in an elseworlds...kind of, however this is indeed bruce and clark, as opposed to bruce jr. and clark jr., their sons who look exactly like them]

[row 6] this is just like picking up a kitty cat: wf 253, 1978, kurt schaffenberger, inks frank chiaramonte, colors gene d'angelo disgruntled burrito: wf 251, 1978, pencils george tuska, inks vince colletta, colors jerry serpe i have to hold you closely it's aerodynamic: wf 277, 1982, pencils don heck, inks romeo tanghal, colors gene d'angelo

[row 7] their toesies are in sync: wf 266, 1981, same as row 4 picture 3 kinda gone beyond burritoing into kidnapping: wf 272, 1981, pencils rich buckler, inks joe giella, colors gene d'angelo clark kneeing bruce: wf 266, same as the first one in this row

[row 8] bruce rolling over midflight in order to look clark in the eyes as he talks about running away from a mysterious ~feeling: wf 285, pencils rich buckler, inks sam de la rosa, colors gene d'angelo wrapping up his disgruntled husband in his cape like a blankie: wf 245, 1977, pencils curt swan, inks murphy anderson, colors jerry serpe

[row 9] actually this is a costume swap and bruce is carrying clark: wf 71, 1954, pencils curt swan, inks stan kaye carting off his civilian husband and son: wf 243, 1977, pencils curt swan, inks al milgrom, colors jerry serpe

bonus for clicking on the readmore; depowered clark getting... carried??? by bruce. they have beards because they are in caveman times but also they're on an alien planet don't worry about it. wf 138, 1963, pencils and inks by jim mooney

[doppleganger-rental]

Carry On Dick (1974) 16mm film

[dweemeister]

Whenever you feel alone, just remember that those kings will always be there to guide you. And so will I.

Born to a turbulent family on a Mississippi farm, James Earl Jones passed away today. He was ninety-three years old. Abandoned by his parents as a child and raised by a racist grandmother (although he later reconciled with his actor father and performed alongside him as an adult), the trauma of his childhood developed into a stutter that followed him through his primary school years – sometimes, his stutter was so debilitating, he could not speak at all. In high school, Jones found in an English teacher someone who found in him a talent for written expression, and encouraged him to write and recite poetry in class. He overcame his stutter by graduation, although the effects of it carried over for the remainder of his life.

Jones' most accomplished roles may have been on the Broadway stage, where he won three Tonys (twice winning Best Actor in a Play for originating the lead roles in 1969's The Great White Hope by Howard Sackler and 1987's Fences by August Wilson) and was considered one of the best Shakespearean actors of his time.

But his contributions to cinema left an impact on audiences, too. Jones received an Honorary Academy Award alongside makeup artist Dick Smith (1972's The Godfather, 1984's Amadeus) in 2011. From the end of Hollywood's Golden Age to the dawn of the summer Hollywood blockbuster in the 1970s to the present, Jones' presence – and his basso profundo voice – could scarcely be ignored. Though he could not sing like Paul Robeson nor had the looks of Sidney Poitier, his presence and command put him in league of both of his acting predecessors.

Ten of the films James Earl Jones appeared in, whether in-person or voice acting, follow (left-right, descending):

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) – directed by Stanley Kubrick; also starring Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Keenan Wynn, and Slim Pickens

The Great White Hope (1970) – directed by Martin Ritt; also starring Jane Alexander, Chester Morris, Hal Holbrook Beah Richards, and Moses Gunn

Star Wars saga (1977-2019; A New Hope pictured) – multiple directors, as the voice of Darth Vader, also starring Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Peter Cushing, Alec Guinness, Billy Dee Williams, Anthony Daniels, David Prowse, Kenny Baker, Peter Mayhew, and Frank Oz

Claudine (1974) – directed by John Berry; also starring Diahann Carroll, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, and Tamu Blackwell

Conan the Barbarian (1982) – directed by John Milius; also starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sandahl Bergman, Ben Davidson, Cassandra Gaviola, Gerry Lopez, Mako, Valerie Quennessen, William Smith, and Max von Sydow

Coming to America series (1988 and 2021; original pictured) – multiple directors; also starring Eddie Murphy, Arsenio Hall, John Amos, Madge Sinclair, Shari Headley, Jermaine Fowler, Leslie Jones, Tracy Morgan, and KiKi Layne

The Hunt for Red October (1990) – directed by John McTiernan; also starring Sean Connery, Alec Baldwin, Scott Glenn, and Sam Neill

The Sandlot (1993) – directed by David Mickey Evans; also staring Tom Guiry, Mike Vitar, Patrick Renna, Chauncey Leopardi, Marty York, Brandon Adams, Grant Gelt, Shane Obedzinski, Victor DiMattia, Denis Leary, and Karen Allen

The Lion King (1994) – directed by Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff, as the voice of Mufasa; also starring Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Matthew Broderick, Jeremy Irons, Moira Kelly, Niketa Calame, Ernie Sabella, Nathan Lane, and Robert Guillaume, Rowan Atkinson, Whoopi Goldberg, Cheech Marin, Jim Cummings, and Madge Sinclair

Field of Dreams (1989) – directed by Phil Alden Robinson; also starring Kevin Costner, Amy Madigan, Ray Liotta, and Burt Lancaster

[oldguardleatherdog]

We Don't Have Nixon To Kick Around Anymore

50 years on from The Resignation, a glancing elegy

On the night of August 8, 1974, as I sat on the big couch in our livingroom with one eye on the TV and the other on the cast on my left arm (another fractured wrist, this time from being last kid standing in a game of Bombardment at 6th grade recess - dodgeball with three balls - I made a heroic dive, felt the sproinggg! as I landed hard, and I knew another trip to Dr. MacFarland was in my near future), I saw the familiar jowls of President Nixon fill the screen on the Zenith, knowing that what Gerald Ford would soon call "our long national nightmare" was about to come to its once unlikely, suddenly imminent end.

For most of 1973 and all of 1974, the Watergate scandal had consumed the nation, crowding out the summer daytime programming (what? no Jeopardy or Concentration or that wild guy from Canada with the 'fro and the stache on a lame game called The Wizard of Odds named Alex Trebek? We had to go outside and play?), making unlikely household names of obscurocrats like John Dean and G. Gordon Liddy and Jeb Stuart Magruder, spawning what we would call memes today featuring Tricky Dick caricatures with endless snorts on Hollywood Squares and Laugh-In, and getting 12-year-old factory town kids engaged with politics in surprising ways (for two years, our Social Studies classes were a hotbed of partisan debate, and I lost ten cents betting on McGovern over Nixon in '72).

We all knew the end was close - the local headlines in giant type screaming "Nixon Resignation is Near" were belaboring the obvious by then - and as the President droned on, I listened for the cue to look at the screen...

"Therefore," - my family and I swiveled our heads in unison - "I shall resign the Presidency effective at noon tomorrow. Vice President Ford will be sworn in as President at that hour in this office."

And just like that, it was over.

The next day, I watched as the Nixons took their final walk across the White House lawn towards the helicopter that would carry them away from Washington and into history, Julie and Tricia and their husbands bearing them up, then the long-suffering Pat who God only knows how she held it together at that scorching, searing moment -

and last, the old crook himself, turning to face the Fords and the gathered staff and America and the world one last time, extending both arms out and up "stiff as a board" as the NBC News anchor remarked, his hands making the peace sign (peace! Jesus Christ, I learned in that instant where irony ended and satire began) in the posture we knew so well, and then just like that, they were gone.

And here we are, half a century hence, my wrist long since healed, wondering how the hell I got old, casting my baleful eye across our miserable mise-en-scène, trying to figure out just where we lost the thread and took the turn that got us back into the same damn jam squared - hell, cubed - and yearning for such a clear-cut, uncomplicated, and decisive ending to our long national nightmare once again.

[Excerpt from the "Checkers Speech", UVA's Miller Center via Vimeo]

[kwebtv]

Marla Adams (August 28, 1938 – April 25, 2024) Film and television actress, best known for her roles as Belle Clemens on The Secret Storm, from 1968 to 1974, and as Dina Abbott Mergeron on The Young and the Restless, for which she received a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series.

Right before joining The Young and the Restless, Adams stepped into the role of Myrna Clegg on the defunct daytime drama Capitol after the departure of actress Carolyn Jones for health reasons, prior to Marj Dusay, who remained until the end of the show's run. As Helen Mullin on Generations, she was involved in a storyline with her husband, Charles, and his black mistress. She was the third actress to play Beth Logan, mother of Brooke (Katherine Kelly Lang), Donna (Carrie Mitchum, now Jennifer Gareis), and Katie (Nancy Sloan, now Heather Tom) on The Bold and the Beautiful (1991). In 1999, she appeared on Days of Our Lives as Dr. Claire McIntyre.

In addition to her daytime works, Adams made more than 40 appearances on primetime television. She guest-starred on The New Dick Van Dyke Show, Adam-12, Starsky and Hutch, Marcus Welby, M.D., Phyllis, The Streets of San Francisco, Emergency!, The Love Boat, Barnaby Jones, Hart to Hart, Happy Days, Hill Street Blues, Who's the Boss?, Matlock; and Columbo. She also had a recurring role on Walker, Texas Ranger from 2000 to 2001. In 2000, she played First Lady Matthews in the television film The President's Man, starring Chuck Norris and Dylan Neal (Wikipedia)

[papillon82fluttersby]

Famous Five Art Nostalgia #21 – Part 4

Introductory post

Masterpost

🙊📓🕰️ Five Are Together Again – Le Club des Cinq en embuscade

Original publication date: 1963 (UK), 1967 (France)

(Cover art by Jean Sidobre, Vermeille collection, 1974)

Plot summary (adapted from Wikipedia):

The children are supposed to be staying at Kirrin Cottage, but as soon as George's parents' maid Joanna catches scarlet fever, the Five are sent to live with an old friend, called Tinker, and his famous scientist father, Professor Hayling, who first appeared two volumes ago in Five Go to Demon's Rocks.

(Worried that Timmy did not escape Kirrin Cottage to greet George at the train station, she takes a taxi to get there quicker while Julian, Dick and Anne walk at a more leisurely pace)

(George is relieved to see Timmy safe and sound, but worried about her parents being in quarantine)

(George talks to her mum from the garden as they make accommodation plans)

(Mischief is delighted to be reunited with his doggo bestie!)

(Excited buddies!)

Due to Professor Hayling’s low tolerance for rowdiness, Jenny the housemaid suggests for the children to camp in a field behind the house. When the children get there, they see that several caravans from a travelling circus have started to settle in. Tinker gets very angry but it turns out that the circus has permission to use this field. The kids pitch their tents in a corner of the field some way from the caravans.

(Tinker performs household chores in his customary manner: rowdily and expeditiously)

(Tinker strides to the unwelcome, uninvited guests)

(Mr Tapper [M. Barbarino], the circus’s manager, is unimpressed with Tinker’s complaints)

(Professor Hayling has a small mishap with the children’s luggage)

(Chatting in the garden)

The children get to see the circus folks’ rehearsing, then have supper with them. Tinker runs his mouth and blabs about his father’s secret work, which is kept in a tower next to the house.

(The children admire the circus’s horses, which are led by Jeremy [Gino], Mr Tapper’s grandson)

(Charlie the chimp is a great help with carrying the children’s camping equipment!)

(He’s also great at playing tennis [cricket in the original English version])

(Anne is amazed at the tap-dancing donkey (not realising that the donkey is actually two performers in a costume))

(Sharing dinner with the circus folk)

(Mr Wooh [M. Karkos], the math wizard, wows the children with his calculating prowesses)

During the night, Jenny gets a scare when she sees a silhouette climbing up Professor Hayling’s tower, which seems crazy because the tower is vertical with no handholds or possible way to climb.

(An acrobatic thief!)

But there was indeed someone, and Professor Hayling discovers in the morning that several secret papers have been stolen. The Five decide to investigate around the circus, and they also make plans to hide the professor's remaining precious papers on Kirrin Island, Professor Hayling being too forgetful to find a good hiding place for the papers himself.

(Jenny and Tinker are at a loss figuring out the theft)

(Tinker is worried about the safety of his father’s remaining papers)

(Making plans)

(Julian agrees with Tinker’s idea about drawing fake schematics to confuse the thieves)

(Tinker punches Jeremy for hitting Dick and George with a stick after both of them ‘borrowed’ – without asking permission – the donkey-skin to try it on)

(Fun at the beach – Mischief wisely prefers to stay on dry land!)

At night, George takes her boat to Kirrin Island to hide the remaining papers. But while still on the shore, she sees a light shining on the island, and suspects that the thieves are lying in wait to get hold of the papers. So she decides to hide the papers on shore before rowing to the island.

(Nightly trip to the island)

George does find two men on the island, one of them Mr Wooh – one of the circus’ performers and Charlie’s owner – and the other a crook who asked Mr Wooh to steal the papers for him. George escapes, unmoors their boat and strands them on the island.

(George is quite happy with her victory)

The children call the police in the morning, and Tinker figures out that Charlie the chimp was the mysterious climber who stole things in the tower at Mr Wooh’s behest.

~~~~~~

Bonus:

Here is the front and back cover art from 1972’s Galaxie collection. This edition included the same inside illustrations that were later used in 1974’s Vermeille collection, featured above.

~~~~~~

Thanks for reading!

[rionvtime58]

LIST OF TOP 10 AUDIO MOVIES IN UK. 1.MEMORIA(2021) Shot in Colombia with Tilda Swinton,the sound implored is huge and reverberating. 2. BLACKMAIL (1929). Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, Hitchcock exploits the new sound technology for heightened dramatic effect and expanding vocabulary of screen storytelling. 3. THE ENEMY BELOW(1959) Directed by Dick Powell,There is built in tension to scenes of listening and waiting. 4. BLINDFOLD (1965). Directored by Philip Dunne,Has an audio centric central conceit thats so clever it makes the ho ham context worth persevering with. 5. THE STONE TAPE(1972) Directed by Peter Sassy,Shot on vedio ,it looks terribly dated given the limited visual effects resources,the BBC radiophonic workshop carry the day conjuring up a whole array of hair raising sounds realising the unearthly horrors of a distant past. 6. THE CONVERSATION (1974) Playing out like an audio equivalent to photographers quest for meaning in Michelangelo Antonioni's Blowup1966.Art of eavesdropping precisely and recording stands out. 7. BLUE(1993) The vividly engaging audio element is tenable in and of itself,but it's only in conjunction with the visuals that the film achieves it's full grandeur. 8. TOUCH THE SOUND (2004) The possibility of a deaf woman becoming one of the world's greatest musicians and in cooperation of to every location she passes through makes it interesting and a must watch. 9. BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO (2012)The sound used insidiously speaks to the strings of the soul and has a unique perspective of sound:shoot first add audio later.10.MEMORIA(2021)It's extraordinary sound design articulates the very grain of everyday ambience.A marvel for those able to surrender to it.

[novumtimes]

American Music Awards 50th Anniversary Special Announce Additional Performers

The American Music Awards’ 50th Anniversary Special has unveiled its star-studded lineup. On Thursday, Oct. 3, CBS and Dick Clark Productions announced the music artists who will be presenting and performing at the anticipated event on Sunday, Oct. 6, which is being held in place of the annual award ceremony in honor of the milestone year. Newly announced performers for the grand special include three-time AMA winner Nelly, Sheila E. and Nile Rodgers & CHIC. The “Hot in Herre” singer will take the stage with Chingy, J-Kwon and St. Lunatics for an homage to ‘hip-hop anthems,” while Nile Rodgers & CHIC will perform their hit song “Le Freak” and Sheila E. will sing “I’m Every Woman” with the already announced performer Chaka Khan. Nelly in Inglewood in June 2022. Paul Archuleta/Getty The broadcast will also welcome special appearances by Reba McEntire, actor Samuel L. Jackson, Kate Hudson, Backstreet Boys alum AJ McLean, Cedric the Entertainer, *NSYNC member Lance Bass and Smokey Robinson. Last month, it was announced that the special will feature performances by Brad Paisley, Gladys Knight, Green Day, Jennifer Hudson, Kane Brown, Mariah Carey, RAYE and Stray Kids. Paisley is set to honor the late country singer Charley Pride, who won the first AMA for country male and country album. He will also perform his new single “Truck Still Works,” which he debuted at the 2024 People’s Choice Country Music Awards. Brad Paisley performs during the 2024 People’s Choice Country Awards. Mickey Bernal/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Additionally, Gladys Knight will perform “Midnight Train to Georgia” in honor of performing at the first-ever AMAs in 1974, and Green Day will perform their new hit “Dilemma.” Jennifer Hudson is set to honor Whitney Houston with a tribute performance; Kane Brown will perform a mix of “classic and current hits,” and Mariah Carey will celebrate 20 years of her record The Emancipation of Mimi. Singer-songwriter RAYE is set to perform “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World” by James Brown, following a retrospective on the American Music Award of Merit, and K-pop group Stray Kids will honor the legacy of boybands. Additional special guests announced in September include 17-time AMA winner Carrie Underwood, Gloria Estefan, Jennifer Lopez, and five-time AMA host Jimmy Kimmel. Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.  According to the press release, the evening will “serve as a tribute to the past 50 years and feature dazzling new performances, heartfelt artist interviews, legendary special guests, and exclusive never-before-seen footage from DCP’s extensive archives, highlighting iconic moments that have defined the awards show and shaped pop culture.” American Music Awards’ 50th Anniversary Special airs on CBS and streams on Paramount+ at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT on Sunday, Oct. 6. Source link via The Novum Times

[ghostmanblog]

Carry On Dick 1974 movie script

[gurumog]

Carry On Dick (1974) The Rank Organisation Dir. Gerald Thomas

[bowlingwithplanets]

I’m making a list of movies I’ve never seen but want to. Please feel free to add to it.

12 Angry Men (1957)

13th (2016)

17 Again (2009)

27 Dresses (2008)

28 Days Later (2002)

50 First Dates (2004)

‘71 (2014)

127 Hours (2010)

500 Days of Summer (2009)

2010: The Year We Make Contact

A Boy and Sungreen (2018)

A Boy Called Christmas (2021)

A Brighter Summer Day (1991)

A Fish Called Wanda (1988)

A Ghost Story (2017)

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014)

A Hero (2021)

A League of Their Own (1992)

A Man Called Horse (1970)

A Raisin in the Sun (1961)

A Separation (2011)

A Silent Voice (2016)

A Simple Favor (2018)

A Star is Born (2018)

A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)

A Taste of Honey (1961)

Adoption (1975)

After Yang (2022)

Air (2023)

Akira (1988)

Alcarras (2023)

Alex Strangelove (2018)

Ali (2001)

Alive (1993)

All the Money in the World (2017)

All the Presidents Men (1976)

Almost Famous (2000)

Always Be My Maybe (2019)

Amar te Duele (2002)

Amelie (2001)

American Movie (1999)

American Psycho (2000)

American Satan (2017)

Amnesiac (2014)

Amores Perros (2000)

An American in Paris (1951)

Anatomy of a Fall (2023)

Anna Karenina (2012)

Annihilation (2018)

Another Country (1984)

Another Round (2020)

Apocalypse Now (1979)

Apollo 11 (2019)

Arctic (2018)

Argylle (2024)

Army of Shadows (1969)

Army of Thieves (2021)

Assassination Nation (2018)

At Eternity's Gate (2018)

Atonement (2007)

Atlantics (2019)

Atlantis (2019)

Atomic Blonde (2017)

Atonement (2007)

Audition (1999)

Babylon (2022)

Bad Times at the El Royale (2018)

Bananas (1971)

Band Aid (2017)

Battle Royale (2000)

Before Night Falls (2000)

Before Sunrise (1995)

Belfast (2021)

Bergman Island (2021)

Big (1988)

Black Sunday (1960)

Black Swan (2010)

Blade (1998)

Blade Runner (1982)

Blockers (2018)

Blue is the Warmest Color (2013)

Blue Jasmine (2013)

Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022)

Booksmart (2019)

Bound (1996)

Boyhood (2014)

Brazil (1985)

Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)

Brick (2005)

Bridge of Spies (2015)

Bridget Jones's Diary (2001)

Bright Star (2009)

Bright Young Things (2003)

Bring It On (2000)

Bringing Up Baby (1938)

Brokeback Mountain (2005)

Broker (2022)

Bruised (2020)

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)

Butter (2011)

C'mon C'mon (2021)

Caddyshack (1980)

Call Me By Your Name (2017)

Can’t But Me Love (1987)

Candyman (1992)

Carmen Jones (1954)

Carol (2015)

Carrie (1976)

Casper (1995)

Castle in the Sky (1986)

Catch Me If You Can (2002)

Caveat (2021)

Challengers (2024)

Changeling (2008)

Charade (1963)

Charlie's Angels (2000)

Cherry (2021)

Child of Kamiari (2021)

Children of Shatila (1988)

Chimes at Midnight (1965)

Chinatown (1974)

Chungking Express (1994)

Cindy La Regia (2020)

City of Lost Souls (1983)

Club Dread (2002)

Clue (1985)

Coach Carter (2005)

CODA (2021)

Colette (2018)

Color Out of Space (2019)

Columbus (2017)

Coming Home in the Dark (2021)

Coming to America (1988)

Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen (2004)

Cracks (2009)

Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011)

Crimson Peak (2015)

Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution (2020)

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)

Da 5 Bloods (2020)

Da Sweet Blood of Jesus (2014)

Dark Places (2015)

Daughter of the Dust (1991)

Dazed and Confused (1993)

Death at a Funeral (2007)

Death on the Nile (1978)

Death to Smoochy (2002)

D.E.B.S (2004)

Definitely, Maybe (2008)

Deliver Us From Eva (2003)

Departure (2015)

Devotion (2022)

Diabolique (1954)

Dial M for Murder (1954)

Dick Johnson Is Dead (2020)

Dick Tracy (1990)

Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995)

Dirty Grandpa (2016)

Do the Right Thing (1989)

Doctor Strange Love (1964)

Dog Day Afternoon (1975)

Dogville (2003)

Don't Look Up (2021)

Dorian Gray (2009)

Dreamgirls (2006)

Drifting Home (2022)

Drive Away Dolls (2024)

Drive My Car (2021)

Dune (2021)

Dunkirk (2017)

Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

Edward Scissorhands (1990)

Elisa & Marcela (2019)

Emily (2023)

Emma (2020)

Emotion (1966)

Empire of Passion (1978)

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

Eurotrip (2004)

Everything Everywhere At Once (2022)

Ex Machina (2014)

Experimenter (2015)

Extra Ordinary (2019)

Fail Safe (1964)

Far From the Madding Crowd (2015)

Fargo (1996)

Fast Color (2019)

Fateful Findings (2013)

Feel Good (2020)

Felidae (1994)

Fight Club (1999)

Fire Island (2022)

First They Killed My Father (2017)

Fist Fight (2017)

Flowers of Shanghai (1998)

Forrest Gump (1994)

Frankenstein (1931)

Freaky Friday (2003)

Free Solo (2018)

Freedom Riders (2010)

Fresh (2022)

Frida (2002)

From Up on Poppy Hill (2011)

Fruitvale Station (2013)

Full Metal Jacket (1987)

G.I. Jane (1997)

Gaia (2021)

Game Night (2018)

Ganja & Hess (1973)

Gattaca (1997)

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)

Get Out (2017)

Ghost in the Shell (1995)

Ghost World (2001)

Ghostbusters (2016)

Ginger Snaps (2000)

Go Brother! (2018)

Godsford Park (2001)

Goliyon Ki Raasleela Ram Leela (2013)

Gone Girl (2014)

Good Luck Chuck (2007)

Good Time (2017)

Goodfellas (1990)

Goon (2011)

Gran Torino (2008)

Grave of the Fireflies (1988)

Gravity (2013)

Green Room (2015)

Gremlins (1984)

Gretel & Hansel (2020)

Groundhog Day (1993)

Hacksaw Ridge (2016)

Half Brothers (2020)

Handsome Devil (2016)

Hanna (2011)

Hannibal (2001)

Haunted Mansion (2003)

Hausu (1977)

Heist (2001)

Hello World (2019)

Her (2013)

Herbie Fully Loaded (2005)

Hereditary (2018)

High Fidelity (2000)

His Girl Friday (1940)

His House (2020)

House of Wax (1953)

How Stella Got Her Groove Back (1998)

Hubie Halloween (2020)

Hugo (2011)

I Want You Back (2022)

I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020)

I'm Your Man (2021)

Ich Bin Kevin Casanova (1959)

Ichi the Killer (2001)

Immortal Tales (1973)

Impetigore (2019)

In Front of Your Face (2021)

In the Mood for Love (2000)

Incendies (2010)

Inception (2010)

Infinite Storm (2022)

Insomnia (1997)

Internal Affairs (2002)

Interstellar (2014)

Interview With The Vampire (1994)

Into the Wild (2007)

Irradiés (2020)

It Happened One Night (1934)

Jackass, the Movie (2002)

Jan Žižka (2022)

Jaws (1975)

Jennifer's Body (2009)

Jojo Rabbit (2019)

Just Wright (2010)

Kapoor and Sons (2016)

Kiki's Delivery Service (1989)

Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)

Kill Bill: Vol, 2 (2004)

Kill Your Darlings (2013)

Killing Them Softly (2012)

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)

King Richard (2021)

Knight of Cups (2015)

Knocked Up (2007)

Kung Fu Panda 4 (2024)

L.A. Confidential (1997)

La Femme Nikita (1990)

Lá Haine (1995)

Lady Bird (2017)

Lake Mungo (2008)

Lake of Death (2019)

Lamb (2021)

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001)

Las Ninas Bien (2018)

Laura (1944)

Les dites cariatides (1984)

Liar Liar (1997)

Liar’s Moon (1980)

Licorice Pizza (2021)

Life is Beautiful (1997)

Like Grains of Sand (1995)

Lisa Frankenstein (2024)

Little (2019)

Little Monsters (2019)

Locked Down (2021)

Lolita (1962)

Looks that Kill (2020)

Los Bando (2018)

Lost in Translation (2003)

Love Actually (2003)

Love and Basketball (2000)

Love Don’t Cost A Thing (2003)

Love Jones (1997)

Love, Rosie (2014)

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (2020)

Machete (2010)

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Maid (2021)

Main Prem Ki Diwani Hoon (2003)

Mainstream (2020)

Magnificent Warriors (1987)

Malevolent (2018)

Man Bites Dog (1992)

Manchester by the Sea (2016)

Manifesto (2015)

Mars One (2023)

Mary Shelley (2017)

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)

Masterminds (2016)

Matewan (1987)

Maurice (1987)

Me Before You (2016)

Meet the Parents (2000)

Memento (2000)

Memoirs of a Geisha (2005)

Metallica: Some Kind of Monster (2004)

Michael (1924)

Middle of Nowhere (2012)

Midnight Mass (2021)

Mimic (1997)

Minari (2020)

Miracle in Cell No. 7 (2019)

Mommy (2014)

Moneyball (2011)

Monster (2004)

Moonlight (2016)

Moonshot (2022)

Moonstruck (1987)

Moscow on the Hudson (1984)

Movie 43 (2013)

Much Ado About Nothing (1993)

Mudbound (2017)

Mulan (2009)

Mulholland Drive (2001)

Murder on the Orient Express (1974)

Mustang (2015)

My Best Friend's Girl (2008)

My Best Friend's Wedding (1997)

My Fair Lady (1964)

My Happy Family (2017)

My Neighbor Totoro (1988)

My Neighbors the Yamadas (1999)

My Octopus Teacher (2020)

My Sister’s Keeper (2009)

Mystic River (2003)

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (1984)

Network (1976)

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (2008)

Nocturnal Animals (2016)

Nope (2022)

North By Northwest (1959)

Nosotros Los Nobles (2013)

Obvious Child (2014)

Okja (2017)

Old (2021)

Olympus Has Fallen (2013)

On the Basis of Sex (2018)

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)

One Million Yen Girl (2008)

Only Yesterday (1991)

Only You (1994)

Outlaw King (2018)

Over the Fence (2016)

Over the Moon (2020)

Padmaavat (2018)

Palm Springs (2020)

Paris, Texas (1984)

Paris When It Sizzles (1964)

Passing (2021)

Paths of Glory (1957)

Perfect Blue (1997)

Perfume De Violetas (2001)

Perras (2011)

Peter Pan (2003)

Pig (2021)

Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game (2023)

Pink Floyd: The Wall (1982)

Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959)

Players (2024)

Point Break (1991)

Poltergeist (1982)

Pom Poko (1994)

Ponyo (2008)

Porco Rosso (1992)

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)

Possession (1981)

Practical Magic (1998)

Primal Fear (1996)

Princess Mononoke (1997)

Private Life (2018)

Procession (2021)

Prom Pact (2023)

Promising Young Woman (2020)

Psycho (1960)

Pulp Fiction (1994)

Pygmalion (1938)

Queen of the Damned (2002)

Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi (2008)

Raees (2017)

Raging Bull (1980)

Raging Fire (2021)

Rear Window (1954)

Rebecca (1940)

Rebel Without a Cause (1955)

Red Shoes and the Seven Dwarves (2019)

Reiko, the Psyche Resurrected (1991)

Repo Men (2010)

Resident Evil (2002)

Rio Bravo (1959)

Rocketman (2019)

Role Models (2008)

Roma (2018)

Roman Holiday (1953)

Romy and Michele's High School Reunion (1997)

Ron's Gone Wrong (2021)

Rope (1948)

Rurouni Kenshin: The Beginning (2021)

Rurouni Kenshin: The Final (2021)

Salaam Bombay (1988)

Salt (2010)

Saw (2004)

Say Anything (1989)

Schindler's List (1994)

Secretariat

Secret Society of Second Born Royals (2020)

Serendipity (2001)

Set It Up (2018)

Seven (1995)

Sharp Objects (2018)

She's All That (1999)

Sherlock Holmes (2009)

Shin Godzilla (2016)

Shirkers (2018)

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Shutter (2004)

Shutter Island (2010)

Sicario (2015)

Silence (2016)

Silver Linings Playbook (2012)

Sin City (2005)

Since You Went Away (1944)

Sleepless in Seattle (1993)

Smoke (1995)

Snow Day (2000)

Snowpiercer (2013)

Solteras (2019)

Some Kind of Wonderful (1987)

Some Like it Hot (1959)

Something Borrowed (2011)

Something New (2006)

Something's Gotta Give (2003)

Sound of Metal (2019)

Southpaw (2015)

Spaceman (2024)

Space Station 76 (2014)

Space Sweepers (2021)

Spoiler Alert (2022)

Spotlight (2015)

Stalag 17 (1953)

Stormbreaker (2006)

Street Dreams (2009)

Sucker Punch (2011)

Sully (2016)

Summertime (1955)

Sunshine Cleaning (2008)

Super Dark Times (2017)

Suspiria (2018)

Swan Song (2021)

Swing Kids (1993)

Summer of Soul (…or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) (2021)

Tailgate (2019)

Tales From Earthsea (2006)

Taxi Driver (1976)

Taxi Driver (2017)

Tehran Taboo (2017)

Tell it to the Bees (2018)

Terminator (1984)

Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991)

The 12th Man (2017)

The Age of Adaline (2015)

The Andromeda Strain (1971)

The Assassin (2015)

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)

The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)

The Batman (2022)

The Beguiled (2017)

The Big Lebowski (1998)

The Big Sick (2017)

The Big Sleep (1946)

The Birds (1963)

The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant (1972)

The Black Dahlia (2006)

The Black Phone (2021)

The Black Room (1935)

The Blair Witch Project (1999)

The Blue Lagoon (1980)

The Call (2020)

The Cat Returns (2002)

The Color Purple (2023)

The Con Heartist (2020)

The Craft (1996)

The Croods: A New Age (2020)

The Danish Girl (2015)

The Dark Knight (2008)

The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson (2017)

The Death of Stalin (2017)

The Doors (1991)

The Double Life of Veronique (1991)

The Dreamers (2003)

The Duchess (2008)

The Edge of Democracy (2019)

The End of Evangelion (1997)

The Endless Summer (1965)

The Eternal Feminine (2017)

The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005)

The Farewell (2019)

The Fifth Element (1997)

The Florida Project (2017)

The French Dispatch (2021)

The Fugitive (1993)

The Gentlemen (2019)

The Girl on the Train (2016)

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

The Glorias (2020)

The Godfather (1972)

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The Goldfinch (2019)

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The Guilts (2021)

The Handmaiden (2016)

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[justforbooks]

It was the misfortune, or perhaps privilege, of the critic, writer and professor Sylvère Lotringer, who has died aged 83, to be best known not as the man who launched postmodern French theory to America, but for his supporting role in his second wife’s 1997 semi-fictional epistolary memoir about her erotic obsession with another man.

In I Love Dick, later turned into an Amazon series with Griffin Dunne as Lotringer, the French professor goes on sabbatical to California, accompanied by his wife Chris Kraus, an experimental film-maker, who falls in love with the eponymous academic, modelled on the British critic Dick Hebdige. Lotringer joins the correspondence, signing himself in one letter as Charles Bovary, casting himself thereby as cuckolded husband to Emma Bovary and Dick as her lover Léon Dupuis.

The couple invite Dick to join what amounts to a postmodern art project that blurs fiction and reality. The project would involve pasting the letters in the correspondence on his car and around his house. “It seems to be a step toward the confrontational performing art you’re encouraging,” Lotringer writes to Dick at one point. In reality, Hebdige issued unsuccessful cease and desist letters.

Kraus and Lotringer publicised the book by reading from their letters to Dick on radio shows, never qualifying the correspondence as fiction but rather the letters as fiction: they were, they explained, piercing the false conceit of literature that protected the privacy of the author. The I Love Dick project was French postmodern theory in action, since the couple conceived it as akin to the feminist art stalking projects of the postmodernist artist Sophie Calle, who was Jean Baudrillard’s student. Baudrillard, for his part, was one of the philosophers whom Lotringer introduced to the US and with whom he collaborated on several books.

Lotringer was founding editor in 1974 of the postmodern theoretical journal and publishing house Semiotext(e), which enabled Lotringer to work, as he put it, as a “foreign agent provocateur” bringing together French theory and contemporary American art to fruitful collaboration. The project did not always work well. In 1975, he organised a conference, Schizo-culture, in New York, at which French postmodernist and poststructuralist philosophers for the first time met American artists, along with radical political groups including the Black Panthers.

Michel Foucault lectured on repression, while John Cage performed the chance-generated piece Empty Words. But fights broke out, speakers insulted each other, and Foucault was accused from the floor of being a CIA agent. The psychoanalyst Félix Guattari announced just before his panel: “I am the chair of this panel and I abolish this panel,” and then left. And yet, this conference and Semiotext(e), both Lotringer’s ideas, profoundly changed American intellectual and artistic cultures, for good or ill.

Lotringer was born in Paris, to Polish Jewish immigrants, Doba (nee Borenstein) and Cudek Lotringer, who ran a fur shop. Sylvère and his older sister, Yvonne, were the only Jewish pupils at their school. After enduring the Nazi occupation of Paris, the Lotringers emigrated to Tel Aviv in the new state of Israel in 1949.

There Sylvère joined Hashomer Hatzair, a socialist-Zionist youth movement and experienced life in a kibbutz called Bar Am. “[We] shared everything … Socialism was a reality,” he recalled. It was a collective idyll he sought to recapture in his later life. He and his family returned to Paris and, after graduating from the Lycée Jacques Decour, he studied for a BA (1962) and an MA (1963) in comparative literature from the Sorbonne.

He then enrolled at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, where he studied with Lucien Goldmann and Roland Barthes. His doctoral thesis, defended in 1967 and written with assistance from Leonard Woolf, whom he met while carrying out research in Britain, and following conversations with Clive Bell, TS Eliot and Vita Sackville-West, was entitled: Virginia Woolf: De la Mort des Valeurs aux Valeurs de la Mort (“From the Death of Values to the Values of Death”).

“I got my PhD as a way of postponing the draft,” said Lotringer. “Algeria was our Vietnam, and I wasn’t exactly keen on being sent there.” Indeed, at the Sorbonne he had led student protests against France’s colonial war.

Lotringer taught for two years (1965 to 1967) for the French government’s Cultural Services in Turkey. He went to the US in 1969 to become assistant professor of French at Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania, before joining the comparative literature faculty at Columbia University in New York in 1972. Even though he taught there until his retirement in 2009, he claimed to find academia increasingly stultifying: “The student rebellion was only four years [past] and no one dared [mention] it any more.”

Founding Semiotext(e) was a liberation. He recalled that one early issue of the journal was about art and madness: “trying to outplay the madness of capitalism by going further into it. This is what we’ve been doing ever since.”

During the late 1970s, Lotringer took to wearing a studded leather jacket and hanging out with his students at punk shows at CBGBs and SoHo art shows. He followed Baudrillard in opposing to the end of his life the idea that revolution against capitalism was possible; rather, what the latter called “fatal strategies” need to be developed. “There’s no ‘other side’ to capitalism, it is everywhere,” Lotringer said. “Cut one tentacle from the monster and others grow faster on other limbs. Capitalism is crawling inside of us all too, the best and the worst, and we have to keep pushing its creative energy in other directions, dodging the reduction to commerce and self-interest.”

Lotringer and Kraus, his second wife, whom he married in 1988, separated in 2005 and later divorced. His first marriage, to the translator Lucienne Binet, also ended in divorce. He is survived by his third wife, the artist Iris Klein, whom he married in 2014; by his daughter Mia, from an earlier relationship with Susie Flato, a co-founder of Semiotext(e); and by two grandchildren, Jonah and Nico.

🔔 Sylvère Lotringer, critic, writer and theorist, born 15 October 1938; died 8 November 2021

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

[aion-rsa]

Scarface’s Tony Montana vs. Michael Corleone: Which Al Pacino is the Boss of Bosses

https://ift.tt/3haJ9K7

Scarface hadn’t been made when Pete Townshend’s 1974 song “The Punk and the Godfather” came out, but The Godfather certainly had. The Who’s anthem was a musical allegory about the rock scene, but the lyrics might as well be interpreted as a conversation between Michael Corleone and Tony Montana. Possibly right before they rumble.

Al Pacino played both men in both movies, and in each film, he begins the story as a punk. But in The Godfather, at least, he grows into the establishment. Michael becomes don. Tony was a shooting star on the other hand, one on a collision course with an unyielding atmosphere. Both roles are smorgasbords of possibilities to an actor, especially one who chased Richard III to every imaginable outcome. Each are also master criminals. But which is more masterful?

The obvious answer would seem to be Michael Corleone because he turned a criminal empire into a multi-billion-dollar international business, and lived to a ripe old age to regret it. Cent’anni, Michael. Tony Montana doesn’t live to see the fruits of his labor, but his career in crime is littered with the successes of excess.

Montana is a hungry, young, loose cannon, just like real-life’s “Crazy” Joe Gallo, who went up against the Profaci family in the street fight which Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola used as inspiration on The Godfather. Gallo stand-in Virgil “The Turk” Sollozzo (Al Lettieri) did a lot of damage while he was trying to muscle in on Don Vito Corleone’s territory, selling white powder. Montana leaves a larger body count in the wake of his cocaine empire career. 

Scarface is Pacino’s film. The whole movie is about Tony Montana and his meteoric rise through money, power and women. The Godfather is a mob movie, crowded with top rate talent in an ensemble case, but it belongs to Marlon Brando. While Michael inherits the position by The Godfather, Part II, he shares Godfather roles with Robert De Niro there, and people come away feeling a little sorry for Fredo. Michael isn’t the focus of an entire film until The Godfather, Part III, and by then folks were only distracted by his daughter. Tony Montana owns the screen from the moment it opens until his last splash in the fountain under the “World Is Yours” sign. The picture was his.

Making Your Bones on First Kills

Pacino brings little of the wisdom of his Godfather role to Scarface’s title character. This is by design. Every crime boss has to make his bones. In mafia organizations, real and cinematic, the button men on the street are called soldiers. And every soldier has to go through basic training before they’re ready to earn their button. Michael gets assassination training from his father’s most trusted capo, Pete Clemenza (Richard S. Castellano) before he goes out to enjoy the veal.

Scarface doesn’t give us many details of the crimes Tony was involved in while still in Cuba, so he makes his cinematic bones executing General Emilio Rebenga in the American detention camp for Cuban refugees. The two scenes are polar opposites in all ways but suspense.

When Michael is sitting at the dinner table with Sollozzo and Police Captain McCluskey (Sterling Hayden), he lets Sollozzo do all the talking, easing him into comfort before pulling the trigger. Tony barely lets Rebenga get a whimper in during his first onscreen hit, which plays closer to an execution. Tony covers the sounds of his own attack with a chant he himself begins. It is a brilliant overplay, especially when compared to another scene that resembles The Godfather, with Tony killing a mid-level gangster and a crooked cop towards the end of Scarface. 

A major difference between the two roles is best summed up in a line Tony says in Scarface. He learned to speak English by watching James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart. Montana comes from the Cagney tradition of broad gangster characterizations. In The Godfather, Kay Adams (Diane Keaton) asks Michael if he’d prefer Ingrid Bergman. The young soldier has to think about it. This is because Pacino is miles removed here from Bogart, who played Bergman’s lover in Casablanca. Pacino’s two gangster icons approached their criminality differently, and Pacino gets to play in both yards.

Pacino remains on an even keel in the Godfather films, but gives a tour de force of violent expression in Scarface, which burns like white heat.

The Handling of Enemies and Vices

In Scarface, Pacino gets to be almost as over the top as he is in Dick Tracy. His accent would never make it past the modern culture board at The Simpsons, but he pulls it off in 1983 because he says so. Pacino bullies the audience into believing it. It’s that exact arrogance which makes us root for Tony Montana. We don’t want to be on his bad side. But the chilled reptilian stare of Michael Corleone is a visual representation of why Sicilians prefer their revenge served cold.

Michael is diabetic, and is usually seen drinking water in The Godfather films. Sure, he has an occasional glass or red wine, and possibly some Sambuca with his espresso, but Michael always keeps a clear head. Tony, not so much. He makes drunken scenes at his favorite nightclubs, and not only gets high on his own supply, but gets so nose deep in it he develops godlike delusions of superheroic grandeur.

Montana is impulsive, instinctive, and decisive. Tony kills his best friend Manny Ribera (Steven Bauer) immediately upon finding him with his little sister Gina (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio). Michael waits until his sister Connie (Talia Shire) is on a plane to Tahoe before he has her husband killed in a hit years in the planning. Later Michael hangs his head silently as the shotgun blast which kills his brother, Fredo (John Cazale), echoes in the distance.

Tony, meanwhile, continues yelling at Sosa’s right-hand man long after his brains are all over the automobile’s interior.

Clothes Make the Man

Tony is written to be charismatic. Even coked out of his mind, he’d be a better fit in Vegas with Fredo’s crowd than with wet blanket Michael in Tahoe. Tony sports white suits, satin shirts, and designer sunglasses. Michael accessorizes three-piece ensembles with an ascot. This isn’t to say Michael had any issues with getting somebody’s brains splattered all over his Ivy League suit. 

Designed by Theadora Van Runkle, Michael preferred dupioni silk. That’s smart. The dark navy wool chalk-stripe suit Tony wears in his death scene was designed by Tommy Velasco and carries the class of a tuxedo. It was after 6pm. What do you think he is, a farmer?

“I’m the guy in the sky, flying high, flashing eyes. No surprise I told lies, I’m the punk from the gutter,” Roger Daltrey belts out on “The Punk and The Godfather.” This is exactly against the no-flash advice Frank Lopez (Robert Loggia) tries to impart on his young protégé in Scarface. Tony was raised not to take any advice other than his own. He also ignores his consigliere’s advice on several occasions. When Manny reminds Tony the pair of them were in a cage a year ago, the rebel gangster says he’s trying to forget that, he’s going after the boss’ girl. 

“I come from the gutter,” Montana proudly contends. “I know that. I got no education but that’s okay. I know the street, and I’m making all the right connections.” 

By contrast, Michael attended Dartmouth College and then dropped out to join the Marines after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Michael is both intelligent and well-connected, loosely modeled on Joseph Bonanno and Vito Genovese. He also accepts the wisdom of his father, who most closely resembled “The Prime Minister” of New York’s Five Families in the 1950s, mafia boss Frank Costello.

The Better Family Man

Pacino’s Don Michael Corleone has access to all his family’s connections, stretching back to the old world. He learns to expertly pull the strings of powerful men, like his father did, but as he grew, he bent. Michael is friends with senators, meets with the President of Cuba, has money in the Vatican, and confesses his sins to a Pope. Michael was insulated throughout his childhood and criminal career. If Tony gets in trouble, he has to get out of it himself, or with the help of a handful of low-level operatives.

Michael is the family rebel, risking his life and getting medals for strangers. He also gets to be both the prodigal son and the dutiful son. He gets the fatted calf and pays the piper. He even tips the baker’s helper for the effort. Michael comes back to both of his families, crime and birth, with a vengeance. He is there for his father the moment he is needed. Michael is the better family man. Tony’s mother is ashamed of him, and he completely ruins his sister’s wedding. Michael’s family means everything to him, and while he still manages to lose them, he actually maneuvers his two families well over rough waters for a very long run.  

Tony Montana is the rebel’s rebel. Even before he tosses off his bandana at the dishwasher job to make a quick score, we knew. He was born bad, in the cinematically good way. This also makes Montana a natural at crime. In The Godfather, Michael has it in his blood as a Corleone, but has his heart set on college, a straight career, and a shot to bring his whole family into the American Dream, which for Montana only exists as a wet dream.

Tony never gets past the hormonal teenage phase of his love of America. He wants to love his new country to death. He is turned on by the dream. He wants to take it. Not earn it. No foreplay necessary, as he claims his latest victim’s wife as his own.

Managerial Skills

Michael is pretty good with his underlings, when he’s not having them garroted on the way to an airport or advising them to slit their wrists in a bath. He promises Clemenza he can have his own family once the Corleones relocate to Las Vegas. He lets Joe Zaza (Joe Mantegna) get away with murder as the guy he sets up to run his old territory in The Godfather, Part III. Michael doesn’t keep turncoats like his trusted caporegime Tessio (Abe Vigoda) around for old times’ sake, and he doesn’t suffer fools at all. It may seem he cuts Tom Hayden (Robert Duvall) loose a little fast, and without warning or due cause. But if he was a wartime consigliere, he would have seen it coming.

While Tony Montana may have a competitive and fast-tracked entry program for new workers (“hey, you got a job”), he’s also the guy who shoots his right-hand man Manny for marrying his sister. Tony exacts a brutal and dangerous revenge for the death of his friend Angel Fernandez in the Miami chainsaw massacre, but doesn’t lift a finger when his cohort Omar Suarez (F. Murray Abraham) is hanged to death from a helicopter by drug lord Alejandro Sosa (Paul Shenar). Michael does have a tendency to have his soldato kiss his ring, but he’s not entirely a .95 caliber pezzonovante.

Read more

Movies

Scarface: Where Tony Montana Went Wrong

By Tony Sokol

Movies

The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone Proves a Little Less is Infinitely More

By Tony Sokol

One of the most important skills a boss must exhibit is how to delegate, and Corleone is a minor Machiavellian master at his delegation. He whispers orders from behind closed doors. Tony is more hands-on. The only reason he tells Manny to “kill that piece of shit” Frank is because he’s already humiliated his former boss into a shell of a real man.

Montana is in the trenches with his soldiers and sets standards by example. He shoots a guy on a crowded Miami street in broad daylight. Montana is a born triggerman and only reluctantly delegates the duty. He has 10 bodyguards when Sosa men raid his mansion fortress. He takes the invading force with one little friend, an M16A1 rifle with a customized grenade launcher. But it sure doesn’t help the employees getting murdered outside.

A Handle on Finances

We don’t know what kinds of criminal activities the Corleone family were involved in between 1958 and 1979. Still, Michael had proven himself a traditionalist and a bit of a prude, so he spends most of his career shaving his take from harmless vices and avoiding drugs, which he sees as a dirty business. But through whatever means, by The Godfather, Part III, Michael has earned enough capital to buy himself out of crime.

Michael gambles successfully on Wall Street, keeps the Genco olive oil company going, and invests in hotels, casinos, and movie studios. He’s got to be pulling in a billion dollars a year in legitimate business. He makes enough to pad the coffers of the Vatican, and his share of Immobiliare stocks pulls in another $1 billion.

Tony looks like he’s earning about $15 million a month. But it doesn’t look like he puts much stock in his future. He makes no investments, only purchases. His only visible holding is the salon his sister works in. But we also have to take into account that he built his empire from scratch. Michael inherited his. And while the head of the Corleone family can blackmail a U.S. senator with a tragic sex scandal, Montana fares no better than Al Capone with tax evasion.

Who Would Win in a Mob War?

Scarface is as violent as the 1932 Howard Hawk original. Blood is a big expense, and 42 people are killed in the 1985 film. It came out amid other over-the-top action blockbusters like First Blood and the contemporary reality of the South American drug trade. So, it would seem, the film has far more violence. But they are easily matched.

The Godfather has a horse’s head, Scarface has a chainsaw. Michael’s brother Sonny (James Caan) gets machine gunned to smithereens at the toll booth, Tony blows the lower limbs off his would-be assassins at a nightclub. Omar is lynched in a chopper, the upper echelon of the mob is taken out by helicopter fire in The Godfather, Part III. Tony and Michael each get to kill a cop.

Both mob figures survive assassination attempts. Michael loses his wife Apollonia in Sicily in a car bombing meant for him. He also avoids the trap Tessio sets at the meeting with Emilio Barzini (Richard Conte), on his turf, where Michael “will be safe.” Tony lives through his initial professionally ordered hit, as well as being saved by Manny from certain death by chainsaw.

While Michael Corleone is able to take care of Barzini, Victor Stracci, Carmine Cuneo, and Phillip Tattaglia – the leadership of the five families – at the end of The Godfather, Tony Montana can only put up a good fight. The Corleone family would win in a protracted war against Montana’s cartel, but there is a possibility Tony would have outlived Michael while the battles raged. Expert swordsmen aren’t afraid to duel the best in the field, but they’re scared of the worst. 

As far as crime tactics and strategic villainy, Michael Corleone plays a game of chess. Tony Montana plays hopscotch. He wins by skipping cracks in the street, but he only rises as far as the pavement.

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[ljones41]

Favorite Movies Set Aboard Trains

Below is a list of my favorite movies set aboard a train:

1.  “Murder on the Orient Express” (1974) - Sidney Lumet directed this all-star adaptation of Agatha Christie’s 1934 novel about Belgian detective Hercule Poirot solving the murder of an American passenger aboard the famed Orient Express.  Albert Finney starred.

2.  “The Tall Target” - Dick Powell starred as a New York City detective who struggles to foil an assassination plot against President-elect Abraham Lincoln during the latter’s rail journey to Washington D.C. in 1861.  Anthony Mann directed.

3.  “North West Frontier aka Flame Over India” (1959) - Kenneth More and Lauren Bacall starred in this adventure tale about a British Army officer ordered to escort and protect a young Indian prince and his American-born governess during their train journey to Delhi during an uprising in the North West province.  J. Lee Thompson directed.

4.  “Silver Streak” (1976) - Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor teamed up for the first time in this comedy thriller about a book editor who stumbles across a murder plot during a train journey from Los Angeles to Chicago.  Arthur Hiller directed.

5.  “Murder on the Orient Express” (2017) - Kenneth Branagh directed and starred in this all-star adaptation of Agatha Christie’s 1934 novel about Belgian detective Hercule Poirot solving the murder of an American passenger aboard the famed Orient Express.  

6.  “From Russia With Love” (1963) - Sean Connery starred as British agent James Bond in this adaptation of Ian Fleming’s 1957 novel about a plot to assassinate the agent.  Terence Young directed.

7.  “Narrow Margin” (1990) - Gene Hackman and Anne Archer starred in this remake of the 1952 movie, “The Narrow Margin”, about a Los Angeles deputy district attorney who attempts to keep a murder witness safe from hit men while traveling through the Canadian wilderness aboard a train.  Peter Hyams directed.

8.  “The Lady Vanishes” (1938) - Alfred Hitchcock directed this adaptation of Ethel Lina White’s 1936 novel, “The Wheel Spins”, which is about a young English tourist, who discovers that her elderly travelling companion seems to have disappeared from the train they were traveling aboard.  Margaret Lockwood, Michael Redgrave and Dame May Whitty starred.

9.  “The First Great Train Robbery” (1978-79) - Michael Crichton wrote and directed this adaptation of his 1975 novel about a master criminal’s plan to rob a train carrying gold to British Army troops during the Crimean War.  Sean Connery, Donald Sutherland and Lesley-Anne Down starred.

10.  “The Narrow Margin” (1952) - Richard Fleischer directed this adaptation of  Martin Goldsmith and Jack Leonard’s unpublished novel about a Los Angeles Police detective and his partner assigned to protect a mob boss’s widow during a train journey from Chicago to Los Angeles.  Charles McGraw, Marie Windsor, and Jacqueline White starred.

Honorable Mention:  “Shanghai Express” (1932) - Josef von Sternberg directed and actress Marlene Dietrich starred in this film about a group of first-class train travelers who are held hostage by a warlord during the Chinese Civil War.  Anna May Wong, Clive Brook and Warner Oland co-starred.

[markwatkinsconsumerguide]

Consumer Guide / No.111 / American musician, Barbara Markay, with Mark Watkins.

MW : Why decide (initially) to switch from making classical music to pop?  

BM : It happened during my first year at Juilliard College toward the end of the school year. It was in their new building at Lincoln Center, and I was practicing the piano in one of their practice rooms on the 5th floor, which had windows and a beautiful view of the streets below and the whole Lincoln Center area. I was taking a little break, and was looking out the window and thought to myself that I should be down there experiencing life and meeting interesting people, instead of practicing piano all day long! I had gotten into the Juilliard prep department / pre-college division when I was 10 years old, and had been a classical pianist for a long time. Maybe it was time for a change!  

After that day in the practice room, I started to think about this more and more, especially every time I got a practice room with a “window on the world” so to speak. I started to think about all those people walking around on the streets, and who among them was actually going to be interested in listening to classical music. I thought that I might be wasting my musical talent on my present studies as a pianist and composer, and that I was much more interested in talking to people and finding out what they were thinking and why they said and did the things they did.

I became more and more interested in writing lyrics, which turned into my first pop songs. I realized that I could communicate the music I had inside me via pop music better than just performing classical music, because I could write about the whole new exciting culture of the times with no narrow, preordained musical style restrictions, or older musical rules. I could write and say whatever I wanted to! It was a brand new world for me! And so much fun! I still appreciated and loved classical music, and graduated from Juilliard college at the end of the four years, but I was now writing these funny, risqué, pop songs, just piano and voice, and everyone I played them for loved it!    

We had academic studies as well as music classes as part of our program, and one of these classes was English literature, which I suddenly was great at. I don’t know where this understanding of human beings came from, or my love for reading English literature, but one day my English teacher, Beatrice Taub (who also taught at Columbia University), asked me after class if I really really was sure, that being a classical pianist and composer was really what I wanted to do with my life, because I was exceptionally good at literature. She suggested that I might take some extension classes at Columbia University to explore it further, maybe transferring to Columbia eventually.    

It was then that I realized that these songs I was writing were going to be a better career path for me because they involved both writing and music, and I got that encouragement to continue with pop music. There was also another class I took that the music students would take together with the actors, that also was encouraging me to continue to write pop music.

Some of the people in my class were destined to be really famous actors, and one of them was Robin Williams. I felt more at ease in this class because they were mostly all actors, and had broader interests than the music students, I felt. Robin asked me one day to play some more of my songs for him, because he wanted to do a show out of them. He said he just loved the humor and the music I had put to the songs. He said he wanted to do some kind of a musical review with it.  He was very funny even then. Just a natural comic, but also a great actor. Nothing came of it at that time, but my songs were eventually made into many musical reviews years later.

That was the beginning of my pop musical career.    

Christopher Reeve, Kevin Spacey, Christine Baranski (1974), Kelsey Grammer, Kevin Kline, Patty LuPone, William Hurt, and more, were all actors who were part of the new acting department at the new Juilliard building at Lincoln Center. Eventually, years later, they would put in a classical guitar department, and a jazz department, which would have been unheard of before the new building came into being. Before these new times, Juilliard considered classical guitar to be “folk” music, and jazz wasn’t even on their radar. I guess someone was thinking like me, and these other forms of music needed to be heard and expressed as well as traditional classical music. So I think it was in the 1980s they got Sharon Isbin (fabulous classical guitarist) to head up the new guitar department, and Wynton Marsalis to head up the new jazz department to get these new genres started at the new Juilliard.  

So much for my very formative Juilliard years!  

These early songs were part of my piano & voice comedy act that was very popular at the time. A lot of people compared me to being a musical Joan Rivers. ‘It’s All Rite’ was part of this set of songs. I went to the UK on vacation soon after graduating college, and met Lee Allen, a music promoter with Carousel Artists (I think that was the name of his company) who booked me on a college tour of England and Ireland. Eventually, I put a small group together and performed everywhere. I played at the New University of Ulster, Belfast, and I opened for 10CC at, I believe, Kings College in London, and played many other colleges as well. What a great time I had, and everyone really liked the songs, including the risqué ones! And I just loved England! But then it became time to return to the states.    

MW : Where does your music fit in terms of categorisation / the music scene?

BM : It wasn’t until the mid-1980s that I started writing more serious pop songs, not the early comedy stuff anymore. That was just after I had put out ‘It's All Rite’, the 12” dance, salsa single version of the song, and it was such a huge international hit. After that, I got interested in metaphysics - the invisible world so to speak - and more philosophical and spiritual matters. I found my first and very great meditation teacher, Anne Elizabeth Cooper, in New York City, and studied metaphysics with her for two years. It absolutely changed my life! I developed a totally different point of view of everything! I started writing songs more along these lines, and also songs about how people relate to each other on deeper levels. I needed to grow as a writer and artist, so this new path I took expanded my views of life and consciousness level.  

Some of my early pop albums like Change To Come and Heart Like A Song contain some of my favorite and most prized songs, like ‘Still Need You’, ‘Change To Come’, ‘I Am The River’ and ‘Fallen Angel’ from the Change To Come album.  And from the Heart Like A Song album, my favorites are, ‘In The Silence’, ‘You Are What You Believe’, ‘Hands Of The Artist’ and ‘All That I Am’. You can tell by just the titles how I had shifted focus and had finally grounded myself in more meaningful songs that brought in a brand new audience.

After those two albums. I continued expanding to world beat grooves with the Shambhala Dance album, which won best dance/dub/club album of the year (New Age Reporter finalist 2005 Lifestyle music award!). ‘Atlantis’, the first cut on the album, got great reviews and lots of airplay, even today it’s still being played. It’s been called “a meditation through movement”, and, “an exotic voyage of mysterious flamenco, Asian and middle eastern melodies, full of powerful world beat grooves beautifully blended together to create an atmosphere of intense, vital emotions both sensual and meditative at the same time” (Wind and Wire magazine, April 2005, Bill Binkelman).

I continued exploring different styles with a meditation album, Heaven And Earth, which is a continuous 50 minute meditation. I got and still get a lot of plays in the yoga studios and meditation classes with this one and the Shambhala Dance album. But you can see how my shift to more metaphysical and spiritual music has carried me into these different, but related styles. I even composed a musical rendition of the ancient, venerated prayer, ‘The Great Invocation’, given to humanity by ascended Tibetan master Djwhal Khul. I have shifted styles as I matured and explored a more expanded and deeper understanding of what I wanted to express musically.  

MW : How are you using social media to stream / promote your music on platforms such as Spotify, iTunes etc?.  

BM : It’s great! You can see all of the albums and singles I’ve done on Spotify, iTunes, and the other streaming services right away. So can all the other artists who put content out there. Everyone had to switch to streaming for the great international exposure. There’s nothing like it!  

MW : Two of your early records were banned. Did you set out to challenge the mainstream with titles  ‘It’s All Rite To F*ck All Nite…’ and  ‘Give Your Dick To Me’?  

BM : I was never really “banned”. What happened is that I produced the first 12” dance single version of  ‘It’s All Rite’, and took it to all the record labels, which were mostly all in New York at the time. Everyone absolutely loved the record! Everyone absolutely wanted a few copies for themselves and their friends. But nobody had the balls to put it out into the market!!!! They were all afraid of repercussions, censorship, and their reputations! So I decided that I would put it out myself, something nobody had done at the time! I thought the record needed to be heard. I found a pressing plant in New Jersey, who were fine with pressing it up, then I went to an art store and got some “press type” and designed my own album cover. I got a friend of mine to take a picture of me, and voila! I had an album ready to go. I had no monies to promote the record, only just enough to record it and press it up. I figured that if I could get it heard by some people, maybe I could get some interest in it and maybe sell a few copies.

At that time, in New York and across the whole country, there were record pools, which were organizations of DJ’s who played the music in the dance clubs. I sent a 12” record (CD’s hadn’t been invented yet) to a list of record pools around the country, and to my surprise, I got a great response. Everyone wanted a copy to play. It was a salsa dance groove, something kinda new for mainstream clubs at the time, but the song was funny and danceable so everyone liked it and wanted to hear it. This was a time when you couldn’t get any airplay without a record label behind you. It was payola all the way. But what I could get was club play, and these DJ’s kept asking me for more and more records. And now people were asking the DJ’s where they could buy the record. So I had to get a distributor to put the records into record stores.

By this time, the record was being played in most all the clubs in the United States, but with no place to buy it.  My first thought was to go to Sam Goody, one of the biggest record stores in New York at the time, and see if they would sell the record. They said yes, showing me a copy of some dance/club charts they had in the store that said that the record was #1 on the charts!!!!! I had no idea about these separate dance/club listings and was really excited that it was already charting. But there were about five dance charts around at this time, and ‘It’s All Rite’ was #1 on all of them! It stayed #1 for about five or six months in a row! It was a sensation! This started in about May of 1978, or 1979, I think, and ran thru September. Sam Goody gave me the very hard to get whole window display of my record, so did Colony records, another big record store in New York City at the time, and the rest is history! Other record stores followed.  

Soon I realized that I needed a bigger distributor, so I contacted several in all the sections of the US, like the South, the Midwest, North Central, East Coast, West Coast, etc. They kept asking me for more and more records. I couldn’t figure out where the records were going. So one day I called my local one stop guy in Long Island City, and he said they were all going overseas. I asked where overseas, and he said, “Everywhere! Especially Holland.” Apparently, 12 miles off the coast of Holland was a ship that had a radio station broadcasting from it, and they could play anything that they wanted. My record was the number one request! Nobody could do anything about it to stop them, because they were in international waters. 12 miles out!!!

Since this was my first big hit, I was inexperienced as to what I needed to do next. It wasn’t too much later, about December of that year, I got a call from WEA International in Holland (Warner Brothers, Electra & Atlantic records all together) who said they wanted to license my record. It sounded great to me, so I took the deal. They published it in Europe, South America, England, Japan, Asia, etc. and promoted it in all the clubs. And I finally got legitimate airplay on it, because on the “B” side I had recorded the “clean” version, called ‘It’s All Rite To Truck All Nite’. Lots and lots of airplay everywhere! Finally!  

It became #16 on the Billboard pop charts in the Benelux countries, and #2 on the charts in Paris, Michael Jackson being #1 at the time. WEA asked me for another single to put out, and I gave them, ‘Give Your Dick To Me’, and that was also very successful. I did the same thing with the “clean” “B” side, ‘Give Your Flesh To Me’.    

So the bottom line is that if you have a record that everyone wants to hear, nothing will stop it from being heard. The people decided they wanted to hear ‘It’s All Rite’, and it squeezed itself through the cracks to be a big hit.  Also, it started a new trend in music of what could be heard and played. Several DJ’s told me that I had really done something BIG with that song. They said it changed the music business forever! It opened the door for new things to come into the market, and then the people could judge for themselves whether they liked it.    

Now getting back to your original question about being censored/banned, I really didn’t have any criticism for doing the record. People just wanted to get a copy of it and enjoy it. And I didn’t set out to “challenge” the system. I was simply expressing my views on what people were really thinking, and I did it via a danceable, funny, comedy record. I was just having fun!

Now, a lot of people took it seriously, literally, and that’s ok. Everyone has their own interpretation of things. That is what Art is for. To make people think. And that is what, ‘It’s All Rite’, did. It made people think, laugh, dance, party, and feel good! Remember, this was a time when Lenny Bruce had set a new standard, Joan Rivers was on the scene, along with Richard Pryor, George Carlin, etc. By the time I came along I took it all for granted that I would be able to put this record out. I wrote it when I was 19 years old and still in college, so that’s what you write when you’re that age. I didn’t care at all what people would think about me or this song!    

Nobody I was aware of wrote anything negative about this “outrageous” song.  One of the many reviews I got for my act (when I was performing all my funny songs with piano & voice around town in the late 1970s) was from Michael’s Thing, an LGBT magazine, New York City’s #1 weekly entertainment magazine and “going out guide” with reviews, comics, of all the performances, Art in the city, new and noteworthy etc. which said about my act, “…...she (Barbara) makes you laugh while she stabs you in the back!”  I got nothing but praise for putting this song out! The LGBT community loved what I had done and fully supported me, along with great reviews from the Village Voice, and a nice write up from Billboard magazine by Roman Kozak. I also played at Huey’s Bar, a gay men’s bar, on Hudson street (west side of New York city near the Hudson river) for several months, through that whole summer, just piano and voice. It was a big hit!  

MW : Tell me about your involvement with Carly Simon’s Coming Around Again album?  

BM : I was doing synthesizer programming for a few of the songs on the album. The arranger I was working with was doing some arrangements for her new album, and I got to do some of the synth programming. It was lots of fun to be involved and to go to the recording sessions.    

MW :  …and the Michael Jackson (BAD) video…. also include any thoughts on Jackson’s charisma, ability (song & dance)….  

BM : I never got to meet Michael Jackson, but I did get to meet Martin Scorsese who was really really interesting! He was asked to produce the video for the song. He came up to the office one day to discuss what kind of extra scored music was needed for the BAD video, music before the song started, and after the song was through. He was very intense, a real thinking kind of guy, and someone who knew what he wanted. He also has a great sense of humor! He impressed me as someone who really knows people. Meeting Scorcese was actually more exciting for me than meeting Jackson as he’s a real character!!! A mature adult!  

MW : You’ve worked with Bruce Willis as a backing singer. Tell me about those times … also include your views on his abilities as an actor turned singer…  

BM : Bruce Willis is a really great actor, and can play almost any part. That includes as a blues singer. The show we did was as his backup singers (along with two friends of mine) for the opening of the new Hard Rock Café in Austin, Texas. It was a very long day, full of rehearsals on stage with the band, and waiting for Bruce to arrive. As we tested mikes and stage positions, we could see a huge crowd starting to form in order to get a good view of the coming show. The press was there, and reported close to 100,000 people waiting to see this opening.

Bruce eventually got there, extremely exhausted. By the time the show started it was dark out, and everyone was excited. Then came the big moment when Bruce Willis came on stage, and everyone went wild! The band started to play and he started to sing. I was shocked by how well he could sing, and put over a song. It was a real “performance”.

He may not have all the technique of a “professional” singer, but what he has is better. He can make you get into the song, feel the song, …it’s not really the voice but the performance that’s spectacular. So close up to me. I could really see why he’s considered one of the great actors of our time. Acting, singing and performing are all connected. And he puts it all together beautifully.    

MW : Describe a typical weekend….before lockdown and during…

BM : Well, I used to love to go to the ocean and watch the sunset a lot, then meet my friends for dinner in one of the great restaurants by the beach or in town. Before lockdown there were great movies to see, not just at home (these days) but at the real movie houses. Plenty of them around in the “old” days. During lockdown everyone has to stream movies at home. At least streaming is safe!  

I also used to like to work out at the gym, but you can’t do that yet, so I’m hoping that sometime in the near future that will become viable again. Sometimes it’s fun just to take a ride up pacific coast highway and breathe in the sea air and see the beautiful scenery. You can still always do that.

There are lots of farmers markets around town, so I always go on the weekends to shop for fresh, whole, organic fruits and veggies! That’s always fun, and sometimes I go with my friends too.

Eating good, fresh, organic foods is my entire “Health Plan”!  You are what you eat! So far, so good!  And I can do this all year long. And during this lockdown, we just all wear masks. It’s fun being at the farmers markets and seeing all the chefs from all the great restaurants in town shopping for their weekly recipes with those big shopping carts they push thru the market. They buy whole boxes of produce and everything else sold there.  

MW : What is your favourite…Carly Simon single?

BM : I think that would be  ‘Mockingbird’, especially the 2015 remaster. James Taylor sounds great on this, and the two of them together just fit together perfectly. This remaster is from Songs From The Trees (a musical memoir collection). I’m glad they did this, because this is a classic! You can hear all the instruments clearly, the voices are very present, and the whole thing is a pleasure to listen to. Musical tastes change, but the classics will remain with us from “gentler” times.  

MW : AND your favourite… Bruce Willis film?

BM :  (I can’t choose just one!)

The Whole Nine Yards : hysterically funny!!! I laugh every time. The Fifth Element is a real classic! I see it again every time it’s on TV. Bruce Willis is fantastic in that “deadpan” character he plays. And the score by French composer Eric Serra is superb. Hip, powerful, rhythmic, smooth, jagged, everything needed to match the screen scene.

But the music stands alone if you just listen to the score by itself without the movie. I think they sold a lot of the music score. The Sixth Sense -  so powerful, and metaphysical! It’s right up my alley! And Bruce Willis has a knack for finding well written screenplays! That’s a big key to the success of the movies he’s in.

And since they’re so well written, he has an opportunity to really show off his talent and get into those great parts.    

MW : AND your favourite… Michael Jackson album?

BM : I think I like the Thriller album the best. I love the songs, especially, ‘Beat It’, ‘Thriller’, and ‘Human Nature’. And it was so well produced by Quincy Jones, with pounding gritty grooves, and great songs.

MW : List, in order of preference, your Top 10 singles & albums of all-time…

BM : (I have the original CD’s of this music, and still call them CD’s, but I’m sure this music is all streaming/downloads by now!)

1. Famous Blue Raincoat: songs by Leonard Cohen, studio album by singer Jennifer Warnes: exquisite, perfect singing of songs with her crystal clear voice! What a superb collaboration this was! I wish they had made more albums together like this one! A true classic! When I first heard it I couldn’t believe what I was hearing! Songs so well written, songs with a real message, and so well sung and produced.    

2. I also love Leonard Cohen’s, ‘Hallelujah’, sung by anyone! It gives me chills every time! Powerful and hauntingly beautiful! The best cover of it that I love is K.D. Lang’s version. (I think it was on her album, Hymns Of The 49th Parallel, 2004).  

3. Bach: Sonatas & Partitas: violinist: Itzhak Perlman: The sub-title of this 2 CD set put out by EMI classics says it all: “Great Recordings of the Century”, which is aptly titled!!! I can listen to this album at any time, and it will put me into a deep trance. I can’t stop listening.

Itzhak Perlman is an absolute master of the violin, and these solo compositions are not only some of Bach’s finest works, but Perlman’s rendition of them is flawless. He understands what the composer was trying to accomplish, and every time I listen to this it feels like he is showing us the true soul of humanity! The longing, the passion, the “reaching to the Light”! The thing about this kind of classical music is its very high vibration! I think it does make you smarter!

4. Then we have Jorge Aragao and his live album entitled Ao Vivo (which means “live”). Another album I have listened to for years. He’s a Brazilian singer/songwriter, and the songs are all sung in Brazilian Portuguese. But don’t let that stop you from listening. It’s exciting, passionate and very well recorded. It has the whole flavor of Brazil in it! Recorded in 1999.

The last song is a great rendition of ‘Ave Maria’. A true classic! (I took a great vacation to Brazil for a month once in the mid-2000s and this album is the real deal! The Brazilians absolutely Love him!)  

5. Edith Piaf: 30e Anniversaire 2 cd set (probably on all the streaming services by now). All the songs are beautifully recorded, written, produced and her voice is extraordinary and present. It gives you the whole culture and passion of the French. It always puts me at a French café with friends and great great food! If you’ve never heard Edith Piaf, it’s well worth a listen.

There was a wonderful movie on her life called La Vie en Rose which I also recommend to get the whole feeling of this music. And I listen to this music often, especially when I’m feeling like there’s no culture west of New York City! She saves the day every time!    

6. John Lennon: Imagine: I think everyone knows this is a classic! It’s a positive message!  

7. The Eagles: Hotel California the whole album, but especially the title song, ‘Hotel California’: It never gets old!    

8. Bach: English Suites performed by pianist Andras Schiff: he’s a Bach specialist, and has a great insight into what Bach intended with this great recording: Part of my regular listening.    

9. Buena Vista Social Club: it really gives you the heart and soul of Cuba. I think the reason this album was such a hit when it was first put out is the huge amount of heart, passion, and honesty it evokes. You can feel it’s the real deal. Nothing fake here!  

10. And last but not least, two albums that were put out by Putumayo a while back, called Brasileiro and Samba Bossa Nova. They are compilations of several Brazilian artists and styles, including bossa nova, folk, light samba, and I think some other styles too, beautifully put together. They are calming, gentle, rhythmic and haunting, and a great way to wake up in the morning. So many positive vibes! So musical and unpretentious!

MW : Where / what was the best meal you’ve ever enjoyed and what was the company like?

BM : Well, all I can remember is that it was in a Paris restaurant, and I was taken there by a record company executive to discuss publishing my music through a Paris company. I remember she told me that the closer you get to Paris from anywhere in the world, the better the food gets!!!

And I wasn’t disappointed!

The meal was some kind of spectacular steak, mousse au chocolate for desert, and fine red wine throughout the meal. Cheeses for dessert! (that was more dessert after the dessert!) And it was the atmosphere and vibe, not just of the restaurant, but of Paris, and the French people and their culture that I found so fabulous! I love the French and they loved me back!!!!  

MW : What can we anticipate coming from you later on in 2021?

BM : I’m currently thinking about something along the lines of my previous Shambhala Dance and Heaven And Earth albums. Worldbeat and with a sleek groove.

It takes time to compose something like that.

It will be announced on my website when it’s done. www.barbaramarkay.com  and I will put it out on the streaming services / downloads as usual.    

(c) Mark Watkins / May 2021