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moorheadthanyoucanhandle · 1 year ago

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GONE FISSION

Opening in theaters this weekend:

Oppenheimer--This biopic splits time the way its hero splits the atom. Narrative is fissionable to writer-director Christopher Nolan; he skips back and forth between episodes of Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) as a bumbling student, then as a philandering rising star in the new field of quantum physics, then as the determined yet haunted lord of Los Alamos, then as a post-bomb martyr to '50s era red-baiting. It glides along smoothly through its fractured scheme, beautifully shot by Hoyt van Hoytema in black and white and varyingly muted shades of color depending on period and point of view, and pushed along by a solemn Philip Glass-esque score by Ludwig Göransson.

Often crowned by a horizontal wide-brimmed preacher-style hat that makes him look like Brad Dourif in Wise Blood, Murphy uncannily captures the bursting, wide-eyed, near-ecstatic face that we see in photos of Oppenheimer. But he manages to give the performance a human dimension, with everyday foibles and touches of humor. He's not a pageant figure.

Murphy carries a star presence. But he's very ably supported by a huge, colorful gallery of star character players: Robert Downey Jr. as AEC Chairmen Lewis Strauss and Josh Hartnett as Ernest Lawrence and Benny Safdie as Edward Teller and Tom Conti as Albert Einstein and David Krumholtz as Isidore Rabi, Oppenheimer's menschy colleague who makes sure he eats and nudges his conscience, and Matthew Modine and Casey Affleck and Kenneth Branagh and Rami Malek and Alden Ehrenreich, to name only a few.

They're all entertaining, but two in particular jolt the movie to life: Florence Pugh as Oppenheimer's joyless lover Jean Tatlock and Matt Damon as the practical-minded, professionally unimpressed Leslie Groves, representing us laypeople in his deadpan, flummoxed scenes with Murphy. For a while it seems like Emily Blunt is underserved as Kitty Oppenheimer, but near the end she gets a juicy, angry scene opposite AEC lawyer Roger Robb (Jason Clarke), who has underestimated her.

Other than maybe a few too many scenes of the young "Oppie" having visions that look like the psychedelic mindtrip at the end of 2001, there was no point where I found Oppenheimer less than absorbing. Few would suggest that this ambitious, superbly acted, superbly crafted film isn't a major, compelling work, a vast expansion on Roland Joffé's watchable but modest Fat Man and Little Boy from 1989. If Nolan's film isn't quite completely satisfying, there could be two reasons.

One is that trying to arrive at a moral conclusion about this movie's hero seems impossible. Put (too) simply: on the one hand, Oppenheimer won World War II for the good guys and checked fascism (not checkmated it, alas) for more than half a century. On the other hand, his invention has the potential to ruin the world for everybody. Both can be true, and the ambiguity is unresolvable.

Another problem with the film, however, is a matter of simple showmanship. Back in 1994, James Cameron brought his silly action picture True Lies to a point where Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis kiss while, far in the distance, we see a mushroom cloud erupt on the horizon. Triumphant, but then Cameron pushed his luck, piling on one last struggle with the villain in a Harrier jet. I remember thinking (and writing) at the time that when your hero and heroine kiss in front of a mushroom cloud, the movie is over.

Oppenheimer, obviously a very different movie, is uneasily structured in the same way. The scenes leading up to the Trinity Test at White Sands in 1945 are riveting, pulse pounding. The explosion and the immediate aftermath, ending the war in Japan, is a stunning dramatic climax.

But then the movie keeps going, for another hour or so, detailing the war of spite and will between Strauss and Oppenheimer, and the revocation of Oppenheimer's security clearance. It's interesting, provocative material in itself, but it seems a little petty and trivial after the "I am become death; destroyer of worlds" stuff. Given Nolan's supposed consummate skill at scrambling sequence, couldn't he have somehow structured the movie to end with a bang and not a whimper?

Barbie--Something is rotten in the state of Barbieland. As this, her first live-action feature begins, our titular heroine finds herself haunted, right in the middle of raging dance parties at her Dreamhouse, by thoughts of death. Still more alarming, when she steps out of her pumps, her feet go flat to the ground.

To be clear, the Barbie in question, played by Margot Robbie, is "Stereotypical Barbie," the blond, inhumanly thin and leggy iconic version of the Mattel doll. She shares the relentlessly cheery pink-plastic realm of Barbieland with countless other Barbies of every race and body shape and profession, all happy and accomplished and untroubled and mutually supportive. They're dimly aware of us in the "Real World"; they believe that their own harmony has created an example that has led to female empowerment and civil rights over here.

The Barbies also share Barbieland with Ken (Ryan Gosling) and countless variant Kens, as well as Ken's featureless friend Allan (a perfectly cast Michael Cera). But the guys exist entirely as accessories to the relatively uninterested Barbies. Ken's unrequited fascination with Barbie makes him subject, unlike the Barbies, to dissatisfaction.

Barbie goes for advice to "Weird Barbie" (Kate McKinnon), whose hair is frizzy and patchy and who's stuck in a permanent split. She's told that her troubles come from the dark feelings of somebody who's playing with her in our reality, so she sets out on a quest to the Real World, emerging in Venice Beach. Barbie connects with a mom and teenage daughter (America Ferrera and Ariana Greenblatt) whose relationship is strained; she's also pursued by the all-male board of Mattel, led by Will Ferrell. Ken, meanwhile, learns about our patriarchy, likes what he hears, and heads back to Barbieland alone to institute it, with himself at the top.

Mattel was founded in 1945, the same year as the Trinity Test, and there are probably feminist social critics who would argue that Barbie, invented in 1959 by Mattel co-founder Ruth Handler (well played by Rhea Perlman in the film), has wreaked only a little less havoc on the modern psyche than Oppenheimer's gadget. Even though I'm in exactly the right generational wheelhouse (I was born in 1962), my own childhood experience with Barbie was very limited, and thus so were my nostalgic associations with her.

Even so, this nutty fantasy, directed by Greta Gerwig from a brilliant script she wrote with Noah Baumbach, made me laugh from its inspired first scene to its Wings of Desire finish. Narrated in the droll, arch tones of Helen Mirren, it manages to come across as both an ingenious pop-culture lampoon/celebration and an unpretentious but surprisingly heartfelt deep dive into the implications of the Barbie archetype. I wasn't a big fan of Gerwig's 2019 version of Little Women, but here she builds her world with the freedom of, well, a kid playing with dolls, but also with the confidence and adult perspective of an artist.

Not everything in the movie works; in the second half the narrative gets a little lost at times in some very strange musical numbers/battle scenes, and the whole thing comes close to going on a bit too long. And it's hard to say just who this movie is for. It hardly seems intended for little girls; however smart, they're too young for the commentary about female identity to mean much to them yet. It seems more like it's meant for adult women with both a fondness for and an ambivalence toward Barbie.

No doubt there are those who would also complain that, however witty and self-effacing, the movie amounts to a feature-length commercial for the brand. But in the age of Marvel and other such franchises, it seems a little late to object to this.

The revelation in the film is Margot Robbie. It seems ridiculous that she's able, in the role of freaking Barbie, to give a performance of such subtlety and nuance and shading and quiet, unforced wistfulness, but she does. And she gets to deliver the best last line of the year.

Theater Camp--Joan, the founder of "AndirondACTS," a slightly gone-to-seed theater camp in upstate New York, has fallen into a coma. The job of keeping the struggling camp afloat falls to her decidedly non-theatrical "crypto bro" son Troy. Meanwhile the devoted instructors work with the exuberantly happy campers to mount the shows, including an original musical about the life of poor comatose Joan (Amy Sedaris). Needless to say, all does not go smoothly.

The creators of this Waiting for Guffman-esque "mockumentary" comedy, Molly Gordon, Nick Lieberman, Ben Platt and Noah Galvin, know the world they're depicting well; all of them have been doing theater since they were small children. Gordon and Lieberman co-directed, from a script by all four; Platt and Gordon play Amos and Rebecca-Diane, the utterly enmeshed, co-dependent acting instructors and Galvin plays the low-profile tech director.

They capture the camaraderie and the sense of belonging that theater can give kids, and their affection for that world is unmistakable, but they're careful not to get too sentimental. The envies and resentments and passive-aggressive denigrations among theater folk, especially at this often professionally frustrated level, are vividly represented.

Getting laughs from the self-important vanities of theater people is pretty low-hanging fruit, I suppose, but Theater Camp is nonetheless often hilarious. The film also manages to get a little deeper at times, touching on the irony that while theater can create a haven and a community for misfit kids, this can generate its own clannishness and exclusionary snobbery, as in Amos and Rebecca-Diane's coldness toward the imbecilic but well-intentioned Troy, charmingly played by a sort of poor-man's Channing Tatum named Jimmy Tatro.

The real joy in Theater Camp, of course, is the acting: Platt, Gordon, Tatro, plus a few vets like Sedaris, Caroline Aaron and David Rasche bring the material to life. But as Glenn, the long-suffering backstage drudge who really ought to be onstage, Noah Galvin, who replaced Platt on Broadway in Dear Evan Hansen, is the revelation among the adults in the cast. He's a knockout.

The revelation among the kids playing the campers is, well, pretty much all of the kids playing the campers. There are some real singing, dancing and acting prodigies in this company. If there was a real theater camp somewhere with this kind of talent, their shows would sell out.

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omishu · 1 year ago

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Tagged by @saccharineomens

Top 3 ships at the moment: Kim Possible x Ron Stoppable (OTP 5evar), Angel x Cordelia (always), and idk, Garion x Ce'nedra (from the David Eddings books), I guess

First ever ship: tbh I'm not really that into shipping (because I'm aroace), and mine are all vanilla canon, so like ... I honestly don't remember my first. Maybe it was KP and Ron? Idk

Last song: the Cruel Ship''s Captain by Bryan Ferry from the Rogue's Gallery album (I'm starting a pirate themed DnD campaign soon and have been exploring albums/artists to beef up my shanties playlist for hype)

Last movie: I think it was Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves with the bestie who tagged me (during their visit. Miss you already, boo!). I mostly binge shows, so idk. Every once in a while I'll take a break from a series to watch a movie, but it never stays in my 'Continue Watching', so I literally don't remember. Lately, I've been trying to catch up on Critical Role 3: Bells Hells, and those episodes are longer than the longest movies

Currently reading: oh God, so many things. I'm reading the last book of the Howl's Moving Castle trilogy: House of Many Ways by Diana Wynne Jones. Also, The Story of Kullervo by JRR Tolkien and published posthumously by his son. Also, part one (the Serpent Queen) of book two (King of the Murgos) of Volume One of The Malloreon sequel to The Belgariad by David Eddings. Also, Stardust by Neil Gaiman and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis (both AGAIN again). And also the first book of the Shadow and Bone series ... and this doesn't even include the MANY webcomics I'm trying to catch up on, or any of the non-fiction I've picked up, or anything on my TBR list that I haven't started yet. Anyway, tldr I like fantasy novels lol

Currently consuming: Air ? Pain killers with some water ? The first episode of the new AMH season ? Snuggles with Lulu ?

Currently craving: *dehydrated SpongeBob voice* WaTeR (always, like a gd fish out of it). Food? Hm idk maybe something sweet, as usual. Friendship, always. Money for my debts. Dreams of a brighter future. More video games to escape reality, MORE cuddles with Lewy, etc etc

People to tag: some of my beloved mutuals <3 no pressure if you don't want to answer

@birchshutter, @piplupcola, @avoidingnaptime, @spikeope, @ashshem, @notsureifyoureablogoragirl, @aviolinstruggle, @demigirl-demigod

#Ask meme #About me #Literally me irl

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turnip0revoluti0n · 5 months ago

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David Tennant like many actors uses his frame to showcase ideas too people he much like Charlie chaplain in the great Dictator useing that too warn us of fascists ungly face

What we don't want is to live in a society that prides its self of Never having nazis in power but only on the side dish this election is one where you have 2 fools bigotry against one anther yet they have the same idea I don't like this ides of democracy

What do I wanna see well a world we wish too live

A post war dream where humanity and community of the individual within the collective is at its heart City's with trams or trolleybus

Take South Yorkshire

We expanded the "supertram train" and make that run on all the lines connecting south yorkshire

We then take the express bus routes into trolly buses

If covert more of Sheffield centre too have trams

Re open Sheffield Victoria but as a high speed/express trains only and get the new staion to be designed by uni students

Invest heavily in that area of Sheffield make that be a second centre

Make the john lewis building a independent market

Covert the old castle market area into an medieval history museum

Build the castle gate and make that have an independent gallery and try get locals to make and sell art there

this is about david tennant telling a transphobic politician to “shut up” btw:

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carmenvicinanza · 2 months ago

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Rebecca Miller

Rebecca Miller, regista e scrittrice statunitense, indaga le relazioni umane alternando cinema e letteratura.

Sostenitrice delle donne nell’industria cinematografica, le sue storie hanno sempre protagoniste femminili e anche i cast tecnici sono costituiti in gran parte di donne. Per il suo impegno, nel 2003, è apparsa nel documentario In The Company of Women.

Tra i suoi film, che ha scritto e diretto, spiccano Angela, che ha ricevuto il Gotham Independent Film Award, Personal Velocity: Three Portraits, che ha vinto il Sundance Film Festival, The Ballad of Jack and Rose, The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, Maggie’s Plan e She came to me.

Ha scritto i romanzi The Private Lives of Pippa Lee e Jacob’s Folly, il libro che ha anche illustrato A Woman Who e la raccolta di racconti Personal Velocity premiata come miglior libro del 2001 dal Washington Post.

È nata a Roxbury, Connecticut, il 15 settembre 1962, da due celebrità, Inge Morath, fotografa della Magnum e il drammaturgo Arthur Miller. Cresciuta in un ambiente culturale molto stimolante, ha studiato arte a Yale e si è specializzata a Monaco di Baviera, in Germania.

Stabilitasi a New York, nel 1987, ha iniziato la sua carriera come pittrice e scultrice, esponendo in diverse gallerie.

Dopo gli studi di cinema alla New School, ha iniziato a realizzare film muti che esponeva insieme alle sue opere d’arte.

A teatro, si ricorda il suo ruolo di Anya ne Il giardino dei ciliegi di Anton Čechov diretta da Peter Brook, nel 1988.

Ha lavorato come attrice cinematografica e televisiva in film come A proposito di Henry (1991), Wind – Più forte del vento (1994) e Mrs. Parker e il circolo vizioso (1994).

Ha anche diretto un’opera teatrale.

Da regista e sceneggiatrice, il suo primo lungometraggio è stato Angela, presentato in anteprima al Philadelphia Festival of World Cinema e poi al Sundance Film Festival, che le è valso l’Open Palm Award dell’Independent Feature Project e il Sundance Film Festival Filmmaker Trophy oltre a altri importanti premi per la fotografia.

Dopo il matrimonio con l’attore Daniel Day-Lewis, da cui ha avuto due figli, si era trasferita a Dublino dove ha prestato servizio di volontariato in case rifugio per donne vittime di violenza, impegno che le ha ispirato la raccolta di racconti Personal Velocity che poi è diventata un pluripremiato film in tre episodi che esplora la trasformazione personale in risposta a circostanze che cambiano la vita.

La pellicola, proiettata al Tribeca Film Festival e all’High Falls Film Festival, ha ricevuto importanti riconoscimenti e fa parte della collezione permanente del MoMA di New York.

Nel 2005 ha scritto la sceneggiatura per l’adattamento cinematografico dell’opera teatrale Proof di David Auburn, vincitrice del premio Pulitzer che ha visto come protagonisti Gwyneth Paltrow e Anthony Hopkins e ha diretto The Ballad of Jack and Rose, proiettato al Woodstock Film Festival e all’IFC Center di New York. Il film le ha procurato una menzione d’onore da MTV nel 2010 per le migliori registe che avrebbero dovuto vincere un Oscar.

Nel 2009 ha girato il suo quarto film, The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, un adattamento del suo romanzo del 2002 con un cast stellare composto da Robin Wright, Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder e Julianne Moore.

Del 2015 è Maggie’s Plan, girato principalmente nel Greenwich Village e presentato in anteprima al Toronto International Film Festival che è stato proiettato in importanti festival internazionali.

La sua ultima fatica risale al 2023, She Came to Me presentato in anteprima mondiale al 73º Festival internazionale del cinema di Berlino, interpretato da Anne Hathaway, Marisa Tomei e Peter Dinklage.

Le sue narrazioni sono pregne di ironia, delicatezza e profondità.

#unadonnalgiorno #rebecca miller #cinema

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angelanatel · 4 months ago

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"De acordo com o antropólogo Clifford Geertz, os símbolos religiosos moldam um ethos cultural, definindo os valores mais profundos de uma sociedade e das pessoas que a compõem. A religião é um sistema de símbolos que atua para produzir estados de espírito e motivações poderosos, abrangentes e duradouros nas pessoas de uma determinada cultura. Um "estado de espírito" é uma atitude psicológica como admiração, confiança e respeito, enquanto uma "motivação" é a trajetória social e política criada por um estado de espírito que transforma o mito em ethos, o sistema de símbolos em realidade social e política. Os símbolos têm efeitos psicológicos e políticos, pois criam suas condições internas (atitudes e sentimentos arraigados) que levam as pessoas a se sentirem confortáveis ou a aceitarem arranjos sociais e políticos que correspondem ao sistema de símbolos...

A religião exerce uma influência tão forte na psique profunda de tantas pessoas que as feministas não podem se dar ao luxo de deixá-la nas mãos dos pais. Mesmo as pessoas que não mais "acreditam em Deus" ou que não participam da estrutura institucional da religião patriarcal ainda podem não estar livres do poder do simbolismo de Deus Pai...

As religiões centradas na adoração de um Deus masculino criam "humores" e "motivações" que mantêm as mulheres em um estado de dependência psicológica dos homens e da autoridade masculina, ao mesmo tempo em que legitimam a autoridade política e social de pais e filhos nas instituições da sociedade. Os sistemas de símbolos religiosos concentrados em imagens exclusivamente masculinas da divindade criam a impressão de que o poder feminino nunca pode ser totalmente legítimo ou totalmente benéfico...

A afirmação do poder feminino contido no símbolo da Deusa tem consequências psicológicas e políticas. Psicologicamente, significa a derrota da visão gerada pelo patriarcado de que o poder das mulheres é inferior e perigoso. Esse novo 'estado de espírito' de afirmação do poder feminino também leva a novas 'motivações' que apoiam e sustentam a confiança das mulheres em seu próprio poder e no poder de outras mulheres na família e na sociedade."

~ Carol P. Christ, "Why Women Need the Goddess" (Por que as mulheres precisam da Deusa), do "Keynote Address at the "Great Goddess Re-emerging" Conference (Discurso principal na conferência "A grande Deusa ressurgindo") na Universidade de Santa Cruz na primavera de 1978 e reimpresso em "Womanspirit Rising: A Feminist Reader on Religion", de Carol P. Christ e Judith Plaskow

Mary Beth Edelson, "Women Rising" na David Lewis Gallery https://davidlewisgallery.com/artists/mary-beth-edelson/

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isabelamospho101 · 7 months ago

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Isabel Amos Exhibition Review

The exhibitions I visited were located in Fotografiska Museum NYC located on Park Ave. The two exhibitions I visited were Futuristic Ancestry: Warping Matter and Space-time(s) which was by French multimedia artist Josefa Ntjam. The second exhibition is Human/Nature: Encountering Ourselves in the Natural World which was a collaborative exhibition of over 14 photographers. The artists are, in order, Alfredo De Stefano, Brendan Pattengale, Cig Harvey, David Ụzọchukwu, Djeneba Aduayom, Edward Burtynsky, Helene Schmitz, Inka & Niclas, Lewis Miller, Lori Nix / Kathleen Gerber, Ori Gersht, Pat Kane, Santeri Tuori, and Yan Wang Preston. Futuristic Ancestry: There are about 45 works related to humans/nature in the exhibition Distorting Matter and Spacetime: Encountering Ourselves in the Natural World having about 30 works in the exhibition. The photos in each issue measure between 24 x 30 inches - 30 x 60 inches. While the exhibitions also included some artworks and video, the majority of the photographs stayed within that size range with the smallest being 12 x 16 in.

Futuristic Ancestry: Warping Matter and Space-time(s) by multimedia artist and photographer Josèfa Ntjam was a multisensory exhibition, which included statues, videos and most importantly photomontages printed to plexiglass. The purpose of Ntjams’ exhibition is to highlight her research into African mythology, science fiction, and the identities and origins that have influenced the world beyond time. Ntjam drew her sci-fi inspirations from Battlestar Galactica to the novels of Octavia E. Butler. The idea was to outline the ongoing battle in the day to day lives of others between prejudice and racism being combated with the black panther movement as the setting taking place in Nigeria through the immersive experience. Humane / Nature: Encountering Ourselves in the Natural World by Alfredo De Stefano, Brendan Pattengale, Cig Harvey, David Ụzọchukwu, Djeneba Aduayom, Edward Burtynsky, Helene Schmitz, Inka & Niclas, Lewis Miller, Lori Nix / Kathleen Gerber, Ori Gersht, Pat Kane, Santeri Tuori, and Yan Wang Preston was a mixture of different takes and forms of landscape photography. The exhibition aims to make photographers aware of the How nature changes, whether beautifully or negatively, is left for interpretation.

While the assignment called for one exhibition, the layout of Fotografiska was a literal top to bottom experience that started with a standard gallery experience with easy lighting and standard framed works which were a part of the Human / Nature: Encountering Ourselves in the Natural World . The next level is the Futuristic Ancestors: The exhibition on warping matter and time is even more varied and includes a video experience. The last layer is to re-examine human/nature: Encountering Ourselves in the Natural World but had a completely different approach to the exhibition that the first floor had. It included lighting, positioning, and significant creative differences. The second part of the exhibition was bursting with vibrant colors, and an immersive video room topped with living installations coupled with the photographer's works. As a whole, it was an engaging experience that needed to be explained from the assignment. The two photos I've chosen are from the Human / Nature: Encountering Ourselves in the Natural World exhibition since it was a personal favorite.

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longlistshort · 2 years ago

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Andrew Edlin Gallery is currently showing a collection of rarely seen works by artist Beverly Buchanan. It covers her years as an abstract expressionist painter in NYC and her later work inspired by the rural South.

The gallery’s press release gives a really good history of this wonderful artist-

The first section of the show features the artist’s abstract paintings and works on paper from the 1970s, alongside post-minimalist sculpture from the late 1970s and early 1980s. The second section introduces a later, more personal side of Buchanan’s oeuvre, her colorful depictions of flowers and small folk-inspired assemblages created during the same period as her well-known “shacks.” A number of the works in the show, many of which were part of the artist’s private collection, have never been shown.

Though Buchanan wrote about her love of “making things” from an early age, it wasn’t until 1971, when she began taking evening classes taught by African-American painter Norman Lewis (1909-1979) at the Art Students League in New York, that her career as an artist took off. Abstract still-lifes that she made in Lewis’s class in 1972 are displayed here for the first time. That same year, her paintings were included in a group show at Cinque Gallery, a nonprofit space co-founded by Lewis and Romare Bearden (1911-1988), which showcased the art of emerging minority artists.

Having witnessed demolition sites in Harlem and SoHo, Buchanan evoked the visual erosion of architectural facades through what she dubbed her “Wall” paintings. In 1976 she presented a selection that she called “Torn Walls” in a two-person show titled City Walls at the Montclair Art Museum in New Jersey. In his New York Times review, David Shirey described the show as “indisputably a tinderbox of a display that will cause sparks to fly” and “the kind …one sees more regularly at the Whitney Museum and at some of New York’s avantgarde galleries.” Three of these paintings are being shown for the first time since that exhibition, forty-seven years ago. The show also includes a monotype, small studies, and a large painting from a series she titled “Black Walls.” The latter was originally featured in Shackworks, a seminal exhibition that opened at the Montclair Art Museum in 1994 and traveled to nine other institutions from 1994-1996.

By the late 1970s, Buchanan was further exploring the aesthetics of architectural decay through sculpture, i.e., cast concrete assemblages, made from pieces of stone, brick debris, clay, and cement mixtures. She arranged these works in clusters on the floor, documenting them with photographs, and exhibited them, notably at Truman Gallery in New York in 1978, and at the feminist artist cooperative A.I.R. Gallery in 1980 in its groundbreaking show Dialectics of Isolation, curated by Ana Mendieta. Some of the small black terracotta works on display may be considered as studies for these larger assemblages.

After moving to Georgia in 1977, Buchanan became increasingly interested in making what she referred to as “environmental sculpture,” artworks that mimicked exterior surfaces and were also site-specific installations that were allowed to decay over time and become part of the surroundings. Most notably, in 1979 she completed Ruins and Rituals (also the title of the Brooklyn Museum retrospective from 2016-2017), and in 1980 Marsh Ruins, with funding from a Guggenheim Fellowship. To construct the three mounds that comprise Marsh Ruins, Buchanan produced her own tabby cement. Composed of the lime from burned oyster shells mixed with sand, water, ash, and other shells, tabby is what colonial settlers used to build structures in coastal Georgia, the location of Marsh Ruins. In her zine “Making Tabby for Brick Sculptures,” Buchanan documented the labor-intensive process of making tabby, a task that in the eighteenth century was typically delegated to enslaved workers. Two smaller iterations of these structures, with bits of oyster shell showing in the concrete, are laid out in the show alongside four other examples of her cast concrete assemblages. Though little is known about their exhibition history, we do know that the artist placed these cast concrete works in her garden in Athens, Georgia. They retain stripes of the green, blue, black and earth-toned paint with which Buchanan initially covered them. The faint outline of her signature “B.B.” is also visible.

Buchanan’s later work is intimately linked to her natural surroundings and folk art. As a native Southerner, she drew on memories from her childhood as well as the lush Georgian landscape and yard art of local self-taught artists. A passionate gardener, Buchanan produced vivid oil pastel flower drawings and small assemblage works. She loved to rummage through thrift stores collecting marbles, wedding toppers, and beads, to create what she referred to as her “Christmas trees,” and “spirit jars,” her take on memory jugs, a prized Southern Folk Art form. Buchanan was particularly moved by a visit to folk artist Nellie Mae Rowe’s home in Fayette County, Georgia, and reminisced: “Being at Nellie Mae Rowe’s home was like being engulfed in a magic forest of her work because every surface had a mark from her hand and the simple chewing gum works made you never take gum as just chewing gum again.” A distinctive chewing gum jug and pin are also included in the show.

This exhibition closes 5/13/23.

#beverly buchanan #andrew edlin gallery #andrew edlin #nyc art shows #art #art shows #painting #drawing #sculpture #abstract expressionist #flower paintings #american folk art #american south

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publicscouse · 8 months ago

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The Vines

Script: Nele Washbourne

The Vines is named after Albert B. Vines, who first opened a public house on this site in 1867. It was rebuilt in 1907 as a Cains pub and is, like its sister pub, the Philharmonic, one of the great show pubs of the country. It is a grade two listed pub on CAMRA's National Inventory of Historic Pub Interiors, it is also known as the legendary ‘Big House’ on Lime Street.

The Vines was the work of Liverpool architect, Walter Thomas for the brewer, Robert Cain. Thomas (1849-1912) is famously known for his public house designs, Sefton Park and Audley House which is now an English heritage site.

This exuberantly baroque pub has etched glass windows, a folly tower, and extravagant faux Dutch gables. The impressive clock that extends over Lime Street (which is claimed to be the biggest free-standing in Great Britain) is by E J Dent & Co., the same company that provided the clock tower at the Houses of Parliament.

The interior of the pub is divided into rooms but features monumental fireplaces, carved mahogany, and beaten copper detail. It also boasts Corinthian pilasters and columns throughout. At the rear is the huge, ornate, high-ceilinged Billiards room, which was a staple of the 19th-century pub scene. The room is dominated by a striking stained glass oval ceiling dome.

In the Queensbury Room, above the fireplace is an intricate wooden bas-relief Viking Longboat. Around the walls there are fifteen plaster panels of cherubs engaged in allegorical pursuits and upon the ceiling is an oval plaster relief including 12 zodiac designs all created by Liverpool based artist Henry Gustave Hiller.

German Art historian Nikolaus Pevsner attributes the plaster reliefs to The Bromsgrove Guild, a 19th-century company associated with the Arts and Crafts Movement that was heavily involved in the plaster designs throughout. The Vines was once owned by A. B. Walker in the late 19th Century, who was later to pay for The Walker Art Gallery. At one time, it boasted its own art collection, which is still reflected in the ‘billiards room.' The room hung paintings worth millions but was relocated to the Walker Gallery and replaced by oil paintings of lesser value. Bill Bryson, a famous US travel writer, eulogised about the Vines in his famous book 'Notes From a Small Island’.

Today, the pub is often full of Liverpool characters and is a constant staple due to its historical conversation and atmosphere.

Sources Pevsner Architectural Guides: Liverpool by Joseph Sharples Public Sculpture in Liverpool by Terry Cavanagh Walks Through History: Liverpool by David Lewis Websites: https://pubheritage.camra.org.uk/pubs/112 http://www.bbc.co.uk/liverpool/localhistory/journey/lime_street/pubs/pub_index.shtml https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1084210

and my new mate Mark, who is a regular...

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hellsitesonlybookclub · 10 months ago

Text

It Can't Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis

Chapter 3-4

CHAPTER III

DOREMUS JESSUP, editor and proprietor of the Daily Informer, the Bible of the conservative Vermont farmers up and down the Beulah Valley, was born in Fort Beulah in 1876, only son of an impecunious Universalist pastor, the Reverend Loren Jessup. His mother was no less than a Bass, of Massachusetts. The Reverend Loren, a bookish man and fond of flowers, merry but not noticeably witty, used to chant "Alas, alas, that a Bass of Mass should marry a minister prone to gas," and he would insist that she was all wrong ichthyologically—she should have been a cod, not a bass. There was in the parsonage little meat but plenty of books, not all theological by any means, so that before he was twelve Doremus knew the profane writings of Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, Jane Austen, Tennyson, Byron, Keats, Shelley, Tolstoy, Balzac. He graduated from Isaiah College—once a bold Unitarian venture but by 1894 an inter-denominational outfit with nebulous trinitarian yearnings, a small and rustic stable of learning, in North Beulah, thirteen miles from "the Fort."

But Isaiah College has come up in the world today—excepting educationally—for in 1931 it held the Dartmouth football team down to 64 to 6.

During college, Doremus wrote a great deal of bad poetry and became an incurable book addict, but he was a fair track athlete. Naturally, he corresponded for papers in Boston and Springfield, and after graduation he was a reporter in Rutland and Worcester, with one glorious year in Boston, whose grimy beauty and shards of the past were to him what London would be to a young Yorkshireman. He was excited by concerts, art galleries, and bookshops; thrice a week he had a twenty-five-cent seat in the upper balcony of some theater; and for two months he roomed with a fellow reporter who had actually had a short story in The Century and who could talk about authors and technique like the very dickens. But Doremus was not particularly beefy or enduring, and the noise, the traffic, the bustle of assignments, exhausted him, and in 1901, three years after his graduation from college, when his widowed father died and left him $2980.00 and his library, Doremus went home to Fort Beulah and bought a quarter interest in the Informer, then a weekly.

By 1936 it was a daily, and he owned all of it... with a perceptible mortgage.

He was an equable and sympathetic boss; an imaginative news detective; he was, even in this ironbound Republican state, independent in politics; and in his editorials against graft and injustice, though they were not fanatically chronic, he could slash like a dog whip.

He was a third cousin of Calvin Coolidge, who had considered him sound domestically but loose politically. Doremus considered himself just the opposite.

He had married his wife, Emma, out of Fort Beulah. She was the daughter of a wagon manufacturer, a placid, prettyish, broad-shouldered girl with whom he had gone to high school.

Now, in 1936, of their three children, Philip (Dartmouth, and Harvard Law School) was married and ambitiously practicing law in Worcester; Mary was the wife of Fowler Greenhill, M.D., of Fort Beulah, a gay and hustling medico, a choleric and red-headed young man, who was a wonder-worker in typhoid, acute appendicitis, obstetrics, compound fractures, and diets for anemic children. Fowler and Mary had one son, Doremus's only grandchild, the bonny David, who at eight was a timid, inventive, affectionate child with such mourning hound-dog eyes and such red-gold hair that his picture might well have been hung at a National Academy show or even been reproduced on the cover of a Women's Magazine with 2,500,000 circulation. The Greenhills' neighbors inevitably said of the boy, "My, Davy's got such an imagination, hasn't he! I guess he'll be a Writer, just like his Grampa!"

Third of Doremus's children was the gay, the pert, the dancing Cecilia, known as "Sissy," aged eighteen, where her brother Philip was thirty-two and Mary, Mrs. Greenhill, turned thirty. She rejoiced the heart of Doremus by consenting to stay home while she was finishing high school, though she talked vigorously of going off to study architecture and "simply make millions, my dear," by planning and erecting miraculous small homes.

Mrs. Jessup was lavishly (and quite erroneously) certain that her Philip was the spit and image of the Prince of Wales; Philip's wife, Merilla (the fair daughter of Worcester, Massachusetts), curiously like the Princess Marina; that Mary would by any stranger be taken for Katharine Hepburn; that Sissy was a dryad and David a medieval page; and that Doremus (though she knew him better than she did those changelings, her children) amazingly resembled that naval hero, Winfield Scott Schley, as he looked in 1898.

She was a loyal woman, Emma Jessup, warmly generous, a cordon bleu at making lemon-meringue pie, a parochial Tory, an orthodox Episcopalian, and completely innocent of any humor. Doremus was perpetually tickled by her kind solemnity, and it was to be chalked down to him as a singular act of grace that he refrained from pretending that he had become a working Communist and was thinking of leaving for Moscow immediately.

He cursed competently as, on the cement walk from the garage to the kitchen, he barked his shins on the lawn-mower, left there by his hired man, one Oscar Ledue, known always as "Shad," a large and red-faced, a sulky and surly Irish-Canuck peasant. Shad always did things like leaving lawnmowers about to snap at the shins of decent people. He was entirely incompetent and vicious. He never edged-up the flower beds, he kept his stinking old cap on his head when he brought in logs for the fireplace, he did not scythe the dandelions in the meadow till they had gone to seed, he delighted in failing to tell cook that the peas were now ripe, and he was given to shooting cats, stray dogs, chipmunks, and honey-voiced blackbirds. At least twice a day, Doremus resolved to fire him, but—Perhaps he was telling himself the truth when he insisted that it was amusing to try to civilize this prize bull.

Doremus looked depressed, looked old, when he lifted himself, as from an invalid's chair, out of the Chrysler, in his hideous garage of cement and galvanized iron. (But it was a proud two-car garage; besides the four-year-old Chrysler, they had a new Ford convertible coupe, which Doremus hoped to drive some day when Sissy wasn't using it.)

Doremus trotted into the kitchen, decided that he did not want some cold chicken and a glass of milk from the ice-box, nor even a wedge of the celebrated cocoanut layer cake made by their cook-general, Mrs. Candy, and mounted to his "study," on the third, the attic floor.

His house was an ample, white, clapboarded structure of the vintage of 1880, a square bulk with a mansard roof and, in front, a long porch with insignificant square white pillars. Doremus declared that the house was ugly, "but ugly in a nice way."

His study, up there, was his one perfect refuge from annoyances and bustle. It was the only room in the house that Mrs. Candy (quiet, grimly competent, thoroughly literate, once a Vermont country schoolteacher) was never allowed to clean. It was an endearing mess of novels, copies of the Congressional Record, of the New Yorker, Time, Nation, New Republic, New Masses, and Speculum (cloistral organ of the Medieval Society), treatises on taxation and monetary systems, road maps, volumes on exploration in Abyssinia and the Antarctic, chewed stubs of pencils, a shaky portable typewriter, fishing tackle, rumpled carbon paper, two comfortable old leather chairs, a Windsor chair at his desk, the complete works of Thomas Jefferson, his chief hero, a microscope and a collection of Vermont butterflies, Indian arrowheads, exiguous volumes of Vermont village poetry printed in local newspaper offices, the Bible, the Koran, the Book of Mormon, Science and Health, Selections from the Mahabharata, the poetry of Sandburg, Frost, Masters, Jeffers, Ogden Nash, Edgar Guest, Omar Khayyam, and Milton, a shotgun and a .22 repeating rifle, an Isaiah College banner, faded, the complete Oxford Dictionary, five fountain pens of which two would work, a vase from Crete dating from 327 B.C.—very ugly—the World Almanac for year before last, with the cover suggesting that it had been chewed by a dog, odd pairs of horn-rimmed spectacles and of rimless eyeglasses, none of which now suited his eyes, a fine, reputedly Tudor oak cabinet from Devonshire, portraits of Ethan Allen and Thaddeus Stevens, rubber wading-boots, senile red morocco slippers, a poster issued by the Vermont Mercury at Woodstock, on September 2, 1840, announcing a glorious Whig victory, twenty-four boxes of safety matches one by one stolen from the kitchen, assorted yellow scratch pads, seven books on Russia and Bolshevism—extraordinarily pro or extraordinarily con—a signed photograph of Theodore Roosevelt, six cigarette cartons, all half empty (according to the tradition of journalistic eccentrics, Doremus should have smoked a Good Old Pipe, but he detested the slimy ooze of nicotine-soaked spittle), a rag carpet on the floor, a withered sprig of holly with a silver Christmas ribbon, a case of seven unused genuine Sheffield razors, dictionaries in French, German, Italian and Spanish—the first of which languages he really could read—a canary in a Bavarian gilded wicker cage, a worn linen-bound copy of Old Hearthside Songs for Home and Picnic whose selections he was wont to croon, holding the book on his knee, and an old cast-iron Franklin stove. Everything, indeed, that was proper for a hermit and improper for impious domestic hands.

Before switching on the light he squinted through a dormer window at the bulk of mountains cutting the welter of stars. In the center were the last lights of Fort Beulah, far below, and on the left, unseen, the soft meadows, the old farmhouses, the great dairy barns of the Ethan Mowing. It was a kind country, cool and clear as a shaft of light and, he meditated, he loved it more every quiet year of his freedom from city towers and city clamor.

One of the few times when Mrs. Candy, their housekeeper, was permitted to enter his hermit's cell was to leave there, on the long table, his mail. He picked it up and started to read briskly, standing by the table. (Time to go to bed! Too much chatter and bellyaching, this evening! Good Lord! Past midnight!) He sighed then, and sat in his Windsor chair, leaning his elbows on the table and studiously reading the first letter over again.

It was from Victor Loveland, one of the younger, more international-minded teachers in Doremus's old school, Isaiah College.

Dear Dr. Jessup:

("Hm. 'Dr. Jessup.' Not me, m' lad. The only honorary degree I'll ever get'll be Master in Veterinary Surgery or Laureate in Embalming.")

A very dangerous situation has arisen here at Isaiah and those of us who are trying to advocate something like integrity and modernity are seriously worried—not, probably, that we need to be long, as we shall probably all get fired. Where two years ago most of our students just laughed at any idea of military drilling, they have gone warlike in a big way, with undergrads drilling with rifles, machine guns, and cute little blueprints of tanks and planes all over the place. Two of them, voluntarily, are going down to Rutland every week to take training in flying, avowedly to get ready for wartime aviation. When I cautiously ask them what the dickens war they are preparing for they just scratch and indicate they don't care much, so long as they can get a chance to show what virile proud gents they are.

Well, we've got used to that. But just this afternoon—the newspapers haven't got this yet—the Board of Trustees, including Mr. Francis Tasbrough and our president, Dr. Owen Peaseley, met and voted a resolution that—now listen to this, will you, Dr. Jessup— "Any member of the faculty or student body of Isaiah who shall in any way, publicly or privately, in print, writing, or by the spoken word, adversely criticize military training at or by Isaiah College, or in any other institution of learning in the United States, or by the state militias, federal forces, or other officially recognized military organizations in this country, shall be liable to immediate dismissal from this college, and any student who shall, with full and proper proof, bring to the attention of the President or any Trustee of the college such malign criticism by any person whatever connected in any way with the institution shall receive extra credits in his course in military training, such credits to apply to the number of credits necessary for graduation."

What can we do with such fast exploding Fascism?

Victor Loveland.

And Loveland, teacher of Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit (two lone students) had never till now meddled in any politics of more recent date than A.D. 180.

He plumped into a deep chair and sat fidgeting, like a bright-eyed, apprehensive little bird.

"So Frank was there at Trustees' meeting, and didn't dare tell me," Doremus sighed. "Encouraging them to become spies. Gestapo. Oh, my dear Frank, this a serious time! You, my good bonehead, for once you said it! President Owen J. Peaseley, the bagged-faced, pious, racketeering, damned hedge-schoolmaster! But what can I do? Oh—write another editorial viewing-with-alarm, I suppose!"

On the door was a tearing sound, imperious, demanding.

He opened to admit Foolish, the family dog. Foolish was a reliable combination of English setter, Airedale, cocker spaniel, wistful doe, and rearing hyena. He gave one abrupt snort of welcome and nuzzled his brown satin head against Doremus's knee. His bark awakened the canary, under the absurd old blue sweater that covered its cage, and it automatically caroled that it was noon, summer noon, among the pear trees in the green Harz hills, none of which was true. But the bird's trilling, the dependable presence of Foolish, comforted Doremus, made military drill and belching politicians seem unimportant, and in security he dropped asleep in the worn brown leather chair.

CHAPTER IV

ALL this June week, Doremus was waiting for 2 P.M. on Saturday, the divinely appointed hour of the weekly prophetic broadcast by Bishop Paul Peter Prang.

Now, six weeks before the 1936 national conventions, it was probable that neither Franklin Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, Senator Vandenberg, Ogden Mills, General Hugh Johnson, Colonel Frank Knox, nor Senator Borah would be nominated for President by either party, and that the Republican standard-bearer—meaning the one man who never has to lug a large, bothersome, and somewhat ridiculous standard—would be that loyal yet strangely honest old-line Senator, Walt Trowbridge, a man with a touch of Lincoln in him, dashes of Will Rogers and George W. Norris, a suspected trace of Jim Farley, but all the rest plain, bulky, placidly defiant Walt Trowbridge.

Few men doubted that the Democratic candidate would be that sky-rocket, Senator Berzelius Windrip—that is to say, Windrip as the mask and bellowing voice, with his satanic secretary, Lee Sarason, as the brain behind.

Senator Windrip's father was a small-town Western druggist, equally ambitious and unsuccessful, and had named him Berzelius after the Swedish chemist. Usually he was known as "Buzz." He had worked his way through a Southern Baptist college, of approximately the same academic standing as a Jersey City business college, and through a Chicago law school, and settled down to practice in his native state and to enliven local politics. He was a tireless traveler, a boisterous and humorous speaker, an inspired guesser at what political doctrines the people would like, a warm handshaker, and willing to lend money. He drank Coca-Cola with the Methodists, beer with the Lutherans, California white wine with the Jewish village merchants—and, when they were safe from observation, white-mule corn whisky with all of them.

Within twenty years he was as absolute a ruler of his state as ever a sultan was of Turkey.

He was never governor; he had shrewdly seen that his reputation for research among planters-punch recipes, varieties of poker, and the psychology of girl stenographers might cause his defeat by the church people, so he had contented himself with coaxing to the gubernatorial shearing a trained baa-lamb of a country schoolmaster whom he had gayly led on a wide blue ribbon. The state was certain that he had "given it a good administration," and they knew that it was Buzz Windrip who was responsible, not the Governor.

Windrip caused the building of impressive highroads and of consolidated country schools; he made the state buy tractors and combines and lend them to the farmers at cost. He was certain that some day America would have vast business dealings with the Russians and, though he detested all Slavs, he made the State University put in the first course in the Russian language that had been known in all that part of the West. His most original invention was quadrupling the state militia and rewarding the best soldiers in it with training in agriculture, aviation, and radio and automobile engineering.

The militiamen considered him their general and their god, and when the state attorney general announced that he was going to have Windrip indicted for having grafted $200,000 of tax money, the militia rose to Buzz Windrip's orders as though they were his private army and, occupying the legislative chambers and all the state offices, and covering the streets leading to the Capitol with machine guns, they herded Buzz's enemies out of town.

He took the United States Senatorship as though it were his manorial right, and for six years, his only rival as the most bouncing and feverish man in the Senate had been the late Huey Long of Louisiana.

He preached the comforting gospel of so redistributing wealth that every person in the country would have several thousand dollars a year (monthly Buzz changed his prediction as to how many thousand), while all the rich men were nevertheless to be allowed enough to get along, on a maximum of $500,000 a year. So everybody was happy in the prospect of Windrip's becoming president.

The Reverend Dr. Egerton Schlemil, dean of St. Agnes Cathedral, San Antonio, Texas, stated (once in a sermon, once in the slightly variant mimeographed press handout on the sermon, and seven times in interviews) that Buzz's coming into power would be "like the Heaven-blest fall of revivifying rain upon a parched and thirsty land." Dr. Schlemil did not say anything about what happened when the blest rain came and kept falling steadily for four years.

No one, even among the Washington correspondents, seemed to know precisely how much of a part in Senator Windrip's career was taken by his secretary, Lee Sarason. When Windrip had first seized power in his state, Sarason had been managing editor of the most widely circulated paper in all that part of the country. Sarason's genesis was and remained a mystery.

It was said that he had been born in Georgia, in Minnesota, on the East Side of New York, in Syria; that he was pure Yankee, Jewish, Charleston Huguenot. It was known that he had been a singularly reckless lieutenant of machine-gunners as a youngster during the Great War, and that he had stayed over, ambling about Europe, for three or four years; that he had worked on the Paris edition of the New York Herald; nibbled at painting and at Black Magic in Florence and Munich; had a few sociological months at the London School of Economics; associated with decidedly curious people in arty Berlin night restaurants. Returned home, Sarason had become decidedly the "hard-boiled reporter" of the shirt-sleeved tradition, who asserted that he would rather be called a prostitute than anything so sissified as "journalist." But it was suspected that nevertheless he still retained the ability to read.

He had been variously a Socialist and an anarchist. Even in 1936 there were rich people who asserted that Sarason was "too radical," but actually he had lost his trust (if any) in the masses during the hoggish nationalism after the war; and he believed now only in resolute control by a small oligarchy. In this he was a Hitler, a Mussolini.

Sarason was lanky and drooping, with thin flaxen hair, and thick lips in a bony face. His eyes were sparks at the bottoms of two dark wells. In his long hands there was bloodless strength. He used to surprise persons who were about to shake hands with him by suddenly bending their fingers back till they almost broke. Most people didn't much like it. As a newspaperman he was an expert of the highest grade. He could smell out a husband-murder, the grafting of a politician—that is to say, of a politician belonging to a gang opposed by his paper—the torture of animals or children, and this last sort of story he liked to write himself, rather than hand it to a reporter, and when he did write it, you saw the moldy cellar, heard the whip, felt the slimy blood.

Compared with Lee Sarason as a newspaperman, little Doremus Jessup of Fort Beulah was like a village parson compared with the twenty-thousand-dollar minister of a twenty-story New York institutional tabernacle with radio affiliations.

Senator Windrip had made Sarason, officially, his secretary, but he was known to be much more—bodyguard, ghost-writer, press-agent, economic adviser; and in Washington, Lee Sarason became the man most consulted and least liked by newspaper correspondents in the whole Senate Office Building.

Windrip was a young forty-eight in 1936; Sarason an aged and sagging-cheeked forty-one.

Though he probably based it on notes dictated by Windrip—himself no fool in the matter of fictional imagination—Sarason had certainly done the actual writing of Windrip's lone book, the Bible of his followers, part biography, part economic program, and part plain exhibitionistic boasting, called Zero Hour—Over the Top.

It was a salty book and contained more suggestions for remolding the world than the three volumes of Karl Marx and all the novels of H. G. Wells put together.

Perhaps the most familiar, most quoted paragraph of Zero Hour, beloved by the provincial press because of its simple earthiness (as written by an initiate in Rosicrucian lore, named Sarason) was:

"When I was a little shaver back in the corn fields, we kids used to just wear one-strap suspenders on our pants, and we called them the Galluses on our Britches, but they held them up and saved our modesty just as much as if we had put on a high-toned Limey accent and talked about Braces and Trousers. That's how the whole world of what they call 'scientific economics' is like. The Marxians think that by writing of Galluses as Braces, they've got something that knocks the stuffings out of the old-fashioned ideas of Washington and Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton. Well and all, I sure believe in using every new economic discovery, like they have been worked out in the so-called Fascist countries, like Italy and Germany and Hungary and Poland—yes, by thunder, and even in Japan— we probably will have to lick those Little Yellow Men some day, to keep them from pinching our vested and rightful interests in China, but don't let that keep us from grabbing off any smart ideas that those cute little beggars have worked out!

"I want to stand up on my hind legs and not just admit but frankly holler right out that we've got to change our system a lot, maybe even change the whole Constitution (but change it legally, and not by violence) to bring it up from the horseback-and-corduroy-road epoch to the automobile-and-cement-highway period of today. The Executive has got to have a freer hand and be able to move quick in an emergency, and not be tied down by a lot of dumb shyster-lawyer congressmen taking months to shoot off their mouths in debates. BUT—and it's a But as big as Deacon Checkerboard's hay-barn back home—these new economic changes are only a means to an End, and that End is and must be, fundamentally, the same principles of Liberty, Equality, and Justice that were advocated by the Founding Fathers of this great land back in 1776!"

The most confusing thing about the whole campaign of 1936 was the relationship of the two leading parties. Old-Guard Republicans complained that their proud party was begging for office, hat in hand; veteran Democrats that their traditional Covered Wagons were jammed with college professors, city slickers, and yachtsmen.

The rival to Senator Windrip in public reverence was a political titan who seemed to have no itch for office—the Reverend Paul Peter Prang, of Persepolis, Indiana, Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, a man perhaps ten years older than Windrip. His weekly radio address, at 2 P.M. every Saturday, was to millions the very oracle of God. So supernatural was this voice from the air that for it men delayed their golf, and women even postponed their Saturday afternoon contract bridge.

It was Father Charles Coughlin, of Detroit, who had first thought out the device of freeing himself from any censorship of his political sermons on the Mount by "buying his own time on the air"— it being only in the twentieth century that mankind has been able to buy Time as it buys soap and gasoline. This invention was almost equal, in its effect on all American life and thought, to Henry Ford's early conception of selling cars cheap to millions of people, instead of selling a few as luxuries.

But to the pioneer Father Coughlin, Bishop Paul Peter Prang was as the Ford V-8 to the Model A.

Prang was more sentimental than Coughlin; he shouted more; he agonized more; he reviled more enemies by name, and rather scandalously; he told more funny stories, and ever so many more tragic stories about the repentant deathbeds of bankers, atheists, and Communists. His voice was more nasally native, and he was pure Middle West, with a New England Protestant Scotch-English ancestry, where Coughlin was always a little suspect, in the Sears-Roebuck regions, as a Roman Catholic with an agreeable Irish accent.

No man in history has ever had such an audience as Bishop Prang, nor so much apparent power. When he demanded that his auditors telegraph their congressmen to vote on a bill as he, Prang, ex cathedra and alone, without any college of cardinals, had been inspired to believe they ought to vote, then fifty thousand people would telephone, or drive through back-hill mud, to the nearest telegraph office and in His name give their commands to the government. Thus, by the magic of electricity, Prang made the position of any king in history look a little absurd and tinseled.

To millions of League members he sent mimeographed letters with facsimile signature, and with the salutation so craftily typed in that they rejoiced in a personal greeting from the Founder.

Doremus Jessup, up in the provincial hills, could never quite figure out just what political gospel it was that Bishop Prang thundered from his Sinai which, with its microphone and typed revelations timed to the split-second, was so much more snappy and efficient than the original Sinai. In detail, he preached nationalization of the banks, mines, waterpower, and transportation; limitation of incomes; increased wages, strengthening of the labor unions, more fluid distribution of consumer goods. But everybody was nibbling at those noble doctrines now, from Virginia Senators to Minnesota Farmer-Laborites, with no one being so credulous as to expect any of them to be carried out.

There was a theory around some place that Prang was only the humble voice of his vast organization, "The League of Forgotten Men." It was universally believed to have (though no firm of chartered accountants had yet examined its rolls) twenty-seven million members, along with proper assortments of national officers and state officers, and town officers and hordes of committees with stately names like "National Committee on the Compilation of Statistics on Unemployment and Normal Employability in the Soy-Bean Industry." Hither and yon, Bishop Prang, not as the still small voice of God but in lofty person, addressed audiences of twenty thousand persons at a time, in the larger cities all over the country, speaking in huge halls meant for prize-fighting, in cinema palaces, in armories, in baseball parks, in circus tents, while after the meetings his brisk assistants accepted membership applications and dues for the League of Forgotten Men. When his timid detractors hinted that this was all very romantic, very jolly and picturesque, but not particularly dignified, and Bishop Prang answered, "My Master delighted to speak in whatever vulgar assembly would listen to Him," no one dared answer him, "But you aren't your Master—not yet."

With all the flourish of the League and its mass meetings, there had never been a pretense that any tenet of the League, any pressure on Congress and the President to pass any particular bill, originated with anybody save Prang himself, with no collaboration from the committees or officers of the League. All that the Prang who so often crooned about the Humility and Modesty of the Saviour wanted was for one hundred and thirty million people to obey him, their Priest-King, implicitly in everything concerning their private morals, their public asseverations, how they might earn their livings, and what relationships they might have to other wage-earners.

"And that," Doremus Jessup grumbled, relishing the shocked piety of his wife Emma, "makes Brother Prang a worse tyrant than Caligula—a worse Fascist than Napoleon. Mind you, I don't really believe all these rumors about Prang's grafting on membership dues and the sale of pamphlets and donations to pay for the radio. It's much worse than that. I'm afraid he's an honest fanatic! That's why he's such a real Fascist menace—he's so confoundedly humanitarian, in fact so Noble, that a majority of people are willing to let him boss everything, and with a country this size, that's quite a job— quite a job, my beloved—even for a Methodist Bishop who gets enough gifts so that he can actually 'buy Time'!"

There was nothing exhilarating in such realism, so all this rainy week in June, with the apple blossoms and the lilacs fading, Doremus Jessup was awaiting the next encyclical of Pope Paul Peter Prang.

All the while, Walt Trowbridge, possible Republican candidate for President, suffering from the deficiency of being honest and disinclined to promise that he could work miracles, was insisting that we live in the United States of America and not on a golden highway to Utopia.

#hellsitesonlybookclub #bookblr #It Can't Happen Here #sinclair lewis

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storystitchers · 11 months ago

Video

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Artist Work Samples Troy Anthony from Saint Louis Story Stitchers on Vimeo.

Saint Louis Story Stitchers Artist Work Samples

Artist: Troy Anthony

Title of the artwork: Peace in the Prairie Minute: 0:00:00 to 1:34:17 Date created: 2018 Date Performed or Exhibited: 2018, Peace in the Prairie, .ZACK Theatre, screened with live performance elements 2019, Peace in the Prairie, Shaw Nature Reserve Freund Lodge, Saint Louis Storytelling Festival, screened with live performance elements 2020, To The Prairie, High Low Listening Room, screened with live performance elements 2022 Peace in the Prairie, World’s Fair Pavilion, film screened for Earth Day event 2023 Peace in the Prairie, Midwest Climate Summit, Olin School of Business, Washington University in St. Louis, portions of film screened with live performance elements Names of artists involved: Troy Anthony (videography, storyteller), Susan Colangelo, Demil Johnson (video editing), Ntegrity (audio editing) Medium: Videography Dimensions: (1:34 minutes out of a 1:10:35 minute video, one-channel color video with sound) Description: Saint Louis Story Stitchers presents Peace in the Prairie, an original presentation exploring the concepts of peace and violence, juxtaposing urban life as experienced by African American people living in the city of St. Louis, Missouri, and the state's endangered prairie lands. Over 7 years of visiting prairies and collecting stories in the city and in the prairies, the artists and youth have created an hour-long film called Peace in the Prairie. Troy Anthony is one of five videographers on the project. Troy has collected video at prairies throughout Missouri including the footage in this piece, collected in 2018 at Prairie State Park, Mindenmines, MO, with Susan Colangelo who collected still photography. The storyteller in this chapter of the film is also Troy Anthony, who recounts a story about survivor’s guilt from his time in the military in Iraq. The story audio was collected at Stitchers Storefront Studio, in St. Louis, MO in 2018.

Title of the artwork: Wade Minute: 1:34:17 to 7:35:00 Date created: 2020 Date Performed or Exhibited: 2021, Bruno David Gallery, Media Room, Clayton, MO 2021, Mid-America Arts Alliance, Kansas City, MO, reflect / project, an exhibition series featuring socially engaged video work by a selection of artists who identify as Queer, Trans, Black, Indigenous, and persons of color. Names of artists involved: Troy Anthony (videography), Susan Colangelo (video editing), Ntegrity, Emeara Burns, KP Dennis (song writing), KP Dennis, She’Kinah Taylor, Branden Lewis, Rachel Jackson, AnnaLise Cason, Shawn Prather, Terrell Fleming, (lyrics and vocals), Engineering and Mixing by Ntegrity, Mastering by Preston Jones, Sawhorse Studio

Medium: Video

Dimensions: (5:48 minutes, one-channel color video with sound) Description: Saint Louis Story Stitchers Artists Collective piece WADE is a work from the multi-year project entitled, The WHY of MY City. The WHY of MY City captures and documents black history through written word and art and gives audiences insight into neighbors’ lives. The WHY of MY City and WADE were presented in 2019 with support from Mid-America Arts Alliance and the National Endowment for the Arts, Missouri Humanities Council, a state agency, National Endowment for the Humanities, Missouri Foundation for Health, and Kranzberg Arts Foundation. Story Stitchers will publish an album and podcast series, StitchCast Studio Special Edition: The WHY of MY City in the spring of 2021.

Title of the artwork: 3 Steps Back Minute: 7:35:00 to 11:30:00

Date created: 2023

Date Performed or Exhibited: 2023, Office of Violence Prevention Kick Back, O’Fallon Park, St. Louis, and Show Me St. Louis on KSDK TV

Published: Ladue News, Aug 4, 2023, laduenews.com/family-and-education/inside-the-center/article_dbb082b0-32eb-11ee-a3d8-474ac4186187.html Names of artists involved: Troy Anthony (videography in O’Fallon Park), Susan Colangelo (video editing), Chris Pendleton (beat, audio editing), KP Dennis, Bobby Norfolk, Branden Lewis (lyrics and vocals), Keith Brown, Aakirah Muhammed, Officer James Harris II, St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department (dancers), Will James (choreography), Show Me St. Louis - KSDK (studio footage)

Medium: Video

Dimensions: (3:47 minutes, one-channel color video with sound)

Description: Firearms are the #1 leading cause of death of children 17 and younger in Missouri. Artists work with police and media in the St. Louis region to bring awareness to firearm safety to children and families through the arts to reduce accidental death and injury and teen suicide due to unlocked and loaded firearms in the home.

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brokehorrorfan · 1 year ago

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Night of the Demons will be released on 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray and Night of the Demons 2 and Night of the Demons 3 will be released on Blu-ray on October 3 via Scream Factory.

Shout Factory is offering an exclusive set with all three films with exclusive slipcovers by Joel Robinson, six posters, a prism sticker, a set of five enamel pins by Matthew Skiff (limited to 600), and a set of five lobby cards by Beyond Horror Design (limited to 500). Pictured below, it costs $199.99.

1988's Night of the Demons is directed by Kevin S. Tenney (Witchboard) and written by Joe Augustyn. Cathy Podewell, Amelia Kinkade, Linnea Quigley, Hal Havins, William Gallo, and Alvin Alexis star.

1994's Night of the Demons 2 is directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith (Leprechaun 3, Leprechaun 4: In Space) and written by Joe Augustyn. Amelia Kinkade, Merle Kennedy, Cristi Harris, Rick Peters, Jennifer Rhodes, and Christine Taylor star.

1997's Night of the Demons 3 is directed by Jim Kaufman and written by Kevin Tenney. Amelia Kinkade, Larry Day, Kristen Holden-Ried, Tara Slone, Gregory Calpakis, Patricia Rodriguez, and Stephanie Bauder star.

Night of the Demons has been newly restored from an earlier 4K scan of the unrated camera negative, presented with Dolby Vision HDR. Night of the Demons 2 has been newly transferred from the interpositive.

Workprints/alternate cuts of all three films are included. Special features are detailed below.

Night of the Demons 4K UHD special features:

Audio commentary by director Kevin S. Tenney, executive producer Walter Josten, and producer Jeff Geoffray

Audio commentary with director Kevin S. Tenney, actors Cathy Podewell, Billy Gallo, and Hal Havins, and special makeup effects creator Steve Johnson

Audio Commentary with director Kevin Tenney, actors Linnea Quigley and Phillip Tanzini and casting director Tedra Gabriel

Interview with writer/producer Joe Augustyn (new)

Interview with actress Jill Terashita (new)

Interview with special effects artist Nick Benson (new)

International cut (standard definition)

Night of the Demons Blu-ray special features:

Audio commentary by director Kevin S. Tenney, executive producer Walter Josten, and producer Jeff Geoffray

Audio commentary with director Kevin S. Tenney, actors Cathy Podewell, Billy Gallo, and Hal Havins, and special makeup effects creator Steve Johnson

Audio Commentary with director Kevin Tenney, actors Linnea Quigley and Phillip Tanzini and casting director Tedra Gabriel

Night of the Demons workprint (under the title The Halloween Party)

The Halloween Party alternate title card

You’re Invited: The Making of Night of the Demons - 2014 documentary with cast and crew

Interview with actress Amelia Kinkade

Interview with actress Allison Barron

Interview with actress Linnea Quigley

Alternate R-rated scenes

A Short Night of the Demons - 6-minute version of the film shown to potential distributors

Theatrical trailer

Video trailer

TV spots

Still galleries

Promo reel

Still galleries - Behind-the-scenes, special effects and makeup, stills, posters and storyboards

It’s Halloween night and Angela is throwing a party… but this is no ordinary Halloween party. Everybody’s headed to Hull House, a deserted funeral home, formerly the home of a mass murderer. But when the partygoers decide to have a séance, they awaken something evil - and these party crashers have a thirst for blood. Now it’s a battle to survive the night in Hull House.

Pre-order Night of the Demons.

Night of the Demons 2 special features:

Audio commentary by actors Cristi Harris, Jennifer Rose, Darin Heames, and Johnny Moran (new)

Audio commentary by director Brian Trenchard-Smith and director of photography David Lewis

Interview with directors Kevin S. Tenney and Brian Trenchard-Smith (new)

Interview with actor Amelia Kinkade (new)

Interview with actress Cristi Harris (new)

Interview with special effects artist Steve Johnson (new)

Interview with producer Jeff Geoffray (new)

Night of the Demons 2 workprint

Dailies

Trailer

Behind-the-scenes gallery

It’s Halloween and the teenagers from St. Rita’s High School want to party at the neighborhood’s haunted house. For years, the Hull House has sat in eerie silence – tales of its haunted past have turned into gory jokes and no one really believes anything ever happened there. However, Angela (Amelia Kinkade), the hostess from hell, is summoning her army of teen demons to the blood-curdling contest between the school’s priests and herself, the princess of darkness.

Pre-order Night of the Demons 2.

Night of the Demons 3 special features:

Audio commentary by director Jimmy Kaufman

Audio commentary by writer Kevin S. Tenney and special effects artist Roy Knyrim (new)

Interview with director Jimmy Kaufman (new)

Interview with writer Kevin S. Tenney (new)

Interview with actress Amelia Kinkade (new)

Interview with producer Jeff Geoffray (new)

Night Of The Demons 3 director’s cut (workprint)

Night Of The Demons 3 TV cut

Behind-the-scenes footage

Alternate title sequence

Dailies

Trailers

It’s Halloween! The gates of Hull House have creaked open once again and Angela (Amelia Kinkade) is waiting for her treats. When a group of rambunctious teens take refuge in the foreboding funeral home to escape the law, they soon realize their grave error.

Pre-order Night of the Demons 3.

#night of the demons #night of the demons 2 #night of the demons 3 #horror #80s horror #1980s horror #scream factory #shout factory #dvd #gift #amelia kinkade #linnea quigley #joel robinson #matthew skiff #beyond horror design

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niamhsnationalproject · 11 months ago

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Week 4

Monday

Due to damage on the overhead line at Coventry, all trains were cancelled towards birmingham from Northampton. This meant i was unable to travel in to uni. As soon as i knew i wasn’t going to make it, i informed Lara and my group. Asking if they would keep me updated throughout the day and if they could call me on teams if there was any group discussion being made.

Once i was back at home, i read through the narrative PowerPoint on Moodle, and tried to brainstorm some ideas for a narrative/ theme for our installation. Just so that if the group were to call me or for the next time i was back at uni, i had something to contribute. Here are a few of my ideas:

- Landmarks (express lift tower, greyfriars bus station etc.)

- shoe factory

- Great Fire of Northampton (1675)

-Everest (Northamptonshire made the shoes of Everest summiters Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay)

-DNA/ double helix themed space

I also found a BBC article on how northampton proposes to save its dying town centre (from May 2019). Conservative councillor Mr Nunn was quoted in this article warning against quickly filling empty shops by selling off land and said does not want “a mediocre thing that does not actually achieve anything for the town.” This should suggest the local government would be in favour of a proposal such as ours as its aim is to bring the community together and to bring more footfall back to Northampton’s town centre. Hindsight is also interesting as a lot of the empty high street stores in northampton have been converted into casinos within the past year which would indicate that this aim was unsuccessful.

I also looked into what type of exhibitions were currently on display in Northampton’s museum and art gallery. They have a punk exhibition and their permanent shoe exhibit. Both of these could be good to go and see when the group come to visit the location. I then also remembered 78 Derngate is another artistic landmark in the town centre as it is Charles Renee mackintosh’s only house designed by him. I forwarded this to the group to see if it was of any interest to them.

Other than this, I didn’t really get to talk to my group about our ideas. They only offered to call when they were going to present their ideas on narrative to the group at the very end of the day and by this point I had to start getting my things together for dance as we were having a class competition in the evening and my dad had kindly agreed to drive me to Sutton Coldfield so I wouldn’t miss it.

There was no progress on what our next steps are to move forward within our project, only a message at 6pm from Lewis suggesting we reconsider having our project based in Birmingham. I found this slightly irritating as we had the whole day to discuss our ideas yet he chose this time of evening to message the group. I also think that changing our idea four weeks into the project would be detrimental to the quality of our work. Therefore I did not respond to the message as I would rather speak to the whole group in person and see what the whole group thinks instead of coming up with a response just from one persons message.

Tuesday

I spent most of this day converting my website to have a section for my portfolio. prior to this, I had tried to create a digital portfolio using a different website however all of the sites used to make a portfolio type of website required a subscription. there do seem to be limits with using big cartel as a portfolio. I seem to only be able to have my images displayed singularly in a top to bottom aspect, unless they are items being sold. this makes it a lengthy process to navigate through my work and its different categories.

Here are images of where I am currently with my CV, website/portfolio and instagram:

Wednesday

The morning began with our feedback from David. I presented to him my CV, website and instagram. He seemed to like what I had in terms of branding and contents. His feedback was mainly for my website. we discussed whether or not I should separate myself from my shop brand, marketing myself in two different manners. this clarity was great for myself to understand how I will market myself in the future. as we decided my art shop is more of a side hustle, rather than my main career goal, I should create a LinkedIn profile for myself, that mentions my shop as one of my projects. from this, I have decided to add "by Niamh Greene" to the description of Badass Cow across my instagram and website. this also confirmed that I should keep my portfolio on my website as it may bring me other commission type of work.

For my website, we also discussed having the categories of my work displayed on one page that would link to collections of my work that could then be enlarged with a description of each piece of work. I will have to do some more playing around with this possibility as I'm not sure big cartel would allow this internally. David also mentioned having more text on my website. I feel I could include this as a welcome to my site/shop, as well as each section/page of the site.

I will also add more highlights to my instagram so that people can quickly navigate through my different categories of work, and potentially upload carousels of different projects that are featured in my portfolio.

I found this day to be the most difficult with my group. The way we originally decided between Birmingham and Northampton was by having a vote and majority ruling because this was the most fair way of deciding. Northampton had the majority yet I feel a lack of engagement from some of the group members. While I understand Northampton is further away and most of the group cannot pop down regularly to the town centre just to have a look around, we are doing a national project and there are copious amounts of online research potentials to make up for this. Not to mention I would be more than happy for them to send me to go check anything out for them. We are also planning a visit to Northampton anyway so that everyone in the group can get a feel for the town and the possibilities.

sunday

more potential narratives:

the high street was mare alive when we were children, the space could mimic the feeling of being a child again, transporting you to a different time.

Northamptons love for theatre (taking design inspiration from the circus?)

dystopian death of the high street, artistic representation of what the current high street looks/feels like.

fireworks/ gunpowder plot

During our group discussion on Wednesday, the others mentioned that they were visual people who struggle to understand a concept unless they can see it. to help display these narratives, I put together some Pinterest boards. We said we would make some designs for the space over the week so I have opted to go for collages to propose this.

here are the mood board/ collages I put together:

^childhood

we could also use charity shop shirts/ garments to make a more sustainable exhibition as well as highlight the high levels of consumerism that takes place in shops on the high street.

^gunpowder

this narrative could be tied with the Northampton landmarks too.

^circus/theatre

^dystopian

this reminded me of the nature lab in first year, specifically joe's group and their "nature will prevail" ethos.

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