A Massive Missive from Uncle Dave2/29/08 Ann Arbor
Many of you complain about the lack of updates from me. Well, here's a BIG update.
I will post three entries totalling about 4400 words. The first post will summarize personal and artistic matters so far in 2008; some of it is edited from email. In the other two I'm sharing some of the best writing I have done in the past months, all film criticism. These are the rough, unedited versions as my employer owns the finished ones. You don't have to read them, but if you do you probably will enjoy the writing. I definitely enjoyed writing all of these things. Uncle Dave 2/29/2008
The Year So FarAfter I got back from Columbus, Ohio on January 3, I composed a couple of art songs out of an old book of religious poetry that I thought turned out very well - one sounds sort of like a Charles Ives song of the 1890s, the other sounds like the 1890s also, but like just a song anyone from that time could have written. I also created finished versions of two rock songs that I sketched out back in the "Auto Glamour Sound" days - don't have too many unfinished ones left and I figure I should get those all done.
I performed all of this stuff down in Cincinnati on February 2. It was at a show where I appeared with some other old friends, whereas the folks at the bar itself merely tolerated us. However one woman actually bought me a drink, and said "You're really good!" I'm glad that I can still reach out and entertain total
strangers with my music and that they'll get it, even though it's definitely different from "normal music."I did one piece that was purely electronic;
that turned out the best of all the things I did.
On February 8 I submitted a major article on homer Rodeheaver to the ARSC Journal - something I've been working on 3 and a half years. This piece contains a full discography and five illustrations. I'll be damned - that project is finally done!
It has been terribly cold here in Ann Arbor; right now it's 8 degrees out, and two nights ago we had four inches of snow. Uncle Dave 2/14/2008
Thought about Reviewing Classical MusicIn writing articles I always try to get across the message that classical is not boring and not just for specialists. I also try and figure out who the audience is for that particular piece and to speak to them too, so in a sense it's a tightrope walk. As to the knowledge part, I sometimes wonder if I'm as well versed in the standard repertoire as I should be, just simply because I cover so many obscure and out of the way things. Last time I checked, i still seemed to know my Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Mozart, Beethoven etc. but still I worry. Uncle Dave 2/14/08
Variation on Same ThoughtI listen to so much obscure music that I worry about losing touch with the central repertoire. Nothing can maim your credibility more than to know Henry Cowell well and not Mozart's G minor Symphony.
I was freaking out a little as I was reviewing a recording of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 31 and wasn't sure I knew it, and would be able to evaluate the performance fairly. I know No. 29 - the "Hammerklavier" of course - and can even hum parts of No. 32 at request; that's one of my favorites. But No. 31 I wasn't sure about - but I put it on, and I instantly recognized it. It was a good performance too, by a Japanese pianist who lives in Florida, Yoko Sata Kothari.
So the standard rep needn't be in one's face all the time in order to connect. But still that does not relieve the worry... Uncle Dave 2/27/08
Thought Valentine's Day 2008
Ever just open the web and just enter "any old thing" into the search bar?
"Die Deepak Chopra Die" brings up Deepak Chopra books in German, and I guess he wrote a book about something like "Where Illusions Go to Die."
"Donkey Head" - entered years ago - brought up instructions on how to win an extra head in a game of Donkey Kong.
"Dr. Phil Evil" brought up an essay on Dr. Phil by a Christian minister on how Dr. Phil is not essentially evil, but teaches evil things. I felt that was a lame-o cop out, and would have carried that particular ball much father myself.
"Bush Asshole" brings up this illustration:
http://krupsjustsayin.blogspot.com/2005/03/joey-nichols-club-member-003.html
Who says researching on the web has to be boring? Uncle Dave 2/14/08
Postscript to All of ThatAllisyn suffered a stroke on Christmas Day; she was finally released on Tuesday. She is working very hard for her recovery and I appreciate all your prayers for Al.
On February 22 I finally transcribed my setting of "The Old Rugged Cross" to a playable score. This was a variation I developed right around my tenth birthday on my Aunt Mabel's reed organ. It has such complex rhythmic outlay that I have tried at least three times to write it out without success. This time I drew up a diagram of the whole piece and counted out the number of beats to each note. Now I'm working on a harpsichord piece, but as I've changed programs, I get to copy some 60 measures out of the old program and into the new. Bummer. That has slowed that project down somewhat. Uncle Dave 2/29/08
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Two Biographies of Great, Powerful Women of the Silent Film EraLois Weber 1881-1939There were a surprising number of women directors in America during the silent period; the most prolific and prominent of them all was Philadelphia-born Lois Weber. Trained as a concert pianist, Weber’s deep sense of moral obligation and religious nature led her to abandon that career to become a street-corner missionary. When this proved more miserable than fulfilling, a fellow missionary suggested that Weber take up acting. In 1905, Weber married actor Phillips Smalley, who shared most of her directing credits among early Lois Weber films, though his exact role in contributing to her work remains uncertain. By 1908, “The Smalleys” - as they were widely known in the industry - were employed by the American branch of Gaumont under the aegis of Herbert and Alice Guy-Blaché, with Weber likely apprenticing to Guy-Blaché, a pioneering woman director whose film credits went back to 1896. It has been established that Weber wrote film scenarios for Gaumont and The Smalleys are believed to have acted in Chronophone shorts - primitive sound films - though information on American Gaumont is scant, and it is not known if Weber directed any films for the company.
In 1911, The Smalleys moved from Gaumont to Rex, Edwin S. Porter’s company, and it is with Rex that Weber’s earliest directorial credits are established; her earliest surviving film is the “split-reel” A Japanese Idyll (1912). Porter’s attempts at making feature films for Rex were failures, and after he left, the Smalleys took over and made Rex a going concern. They made films that appealed especially to women - then the overwhelming majority of the film audience – social melodramas, mysteries, stories set in exotic locales and the occasional “highbrow” project, such as her first feature, an adaptation of The Merchant of Venice (1914). This is sometimes referred to erroneously as the first American feature directed by a woman; Helen Gardner seems to have beaten Weber to this distinction with Cleopatra (1912).
Rex was one of several companies distributed by Universal, and Carl Laemmle Sr. was sufficiently impressed with Weber’s talent to move her from Rex into a separate Universal unit under her supervision in 1914. In 1916, Weber was entrusted with a high-budget Universal feature, The Dumb Girl of Portici (1916) starring modern dancer Isadora Duncan in her only film; by that time Weber was considered Universal’s most important director and was its most highly paid. This was at a time when directors like Rex Ingram and Tod Browning were just beginning their directorial careers at Universal; for a time, John Ford worked as an assistant to Lois Weber.
Weber established her own studio in 1917 and broke with Universal in 1919; she signed a four-picture deal with Famous-Players/Lasky at a $100,000 per title, a contract which was nullified after the first three failed at the box office. In 1922, she divorced Smalley, and after a couple of lukewarmly received independent efforts Weber wound up back at Universal directing studio properties. Weber adapted the antebellum stage play Topsy and Eva (1927), sort of an unauthorized sequel to “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” but refused to direct it owing to its racial insensitivity, after which Universal fired her. Although Cecil B. DeMille subsequently allowed her to direct The Angel of Broadway (1927) for his own company, Weber was finished as a director. She made one more “states rights” feature, White Heat (1934), Weber’s only talkie, a racially-charged tale of miscegenation in the cane fields; it is lost, though is notable as being the first feature film made on the island of Kawai and possibly the first feature film to be shown on American television (in 1940). When she died at the Motion Picture Home at age 58 in 1939, Lois Weber was so broke that her funeral was paid for by her friends and admirers of her films.
In a directorial career spanning three decades, Lois Weber directed more than a 130 films, yet not even a full dozen of them survive. Modern audiences often have difficulty adjusting to what they perceive as the preachy, excessively moral tone of Weber’s films; she did view herself as a cinematic missionary, and though she was a progressive one, Weber’s message failed to click with movie audiences once America entered the Jazz Age. Nevertheless, it is easy to see why her peers admired her work so much; Lois Weber was a superb visual stylist who was innovative on many levels, and her best films seem incredibly “modern” for their era. In Suspense (1914), she foreshadowed Hitchcock in the use of unusual camera angles and split screen devices as a way to build cinematic tension. In her most amazing surviving effort, The Hypocrite (1915), Weber uses tinting, lap dissolves, overlays, symbols and even a ragged pan to illustrate in allegorical form the frenzied fantasies of a religious ascetic. The Hypocrite might be the earliest American feature framed mostly in an avant-garde style, closer to the spirit of Pasolini than to DeMille; her best-known film The Blot (1921) likewise anticipates Ingmar Bergman in its slow pace, intense concentration on ordinary characters and unresolved conclusion. In Where Are My Children? (1916), Weber dealt with the topic of abortion; Weber is also known to have made films about drug abuse and other glaring social ills. In their day her films were lighting rods for controversy – among its ensemble cast, The Hypocrite includes a fully nude woman, “Truth,” as character, making it a magnet for the censors. Most censor boards, though, passed the film owing to its religious content, an important victory to win in an era marked by the absence of a national censorial authority, when state-based censors were just beginning to wield their scissors with impunity.
Lois Weber wasn’t just a woman who made movies very early; she was historically one of the most important of all American women directors and a major figure in the silent era. Uncle Dave 11/26/2007
Mabel Normand 1892-1930
Mabel Normand was the first great comedienne of American cinema and one the most important – and popular - American silent film actresses. By the time she first showed up at the Biograph studio in 1910, Normand was already a “Gibson Girl” (a model for illustrator Charles Dana Gibson) and a champion swimmer, and she was not yet 18. Biograph published a photo of Normand with the phony name “Muriel Fortescue,” leading some sources to believe this her real name, but nevertheless it was Mabel Normand; she was from a French Canadian family and born on Staten Island on November 9, 1892. Normand worked for Biograph only a few months, then joined Vitagraph for about a year while the Biograph Company wintered out West. After they returned, so did she, working under the direction of D. W. Griffith. Griffith cast Normand as the “second girl” in melodramas and in tomboy roles; Griffith’s protégé, Mack Sennett, primarily made comedies and would exploit Normand’s natural comic abilities and athleticism through casting her in the lead. A Dash Through the Clouds (1912) featured Normand escaping with her beau in a new gadget, an Wright Brothers styled airplane. This, and other, short comedies made by Sennett helped establish Mabel Normand as a girl who could take care of herself, willful, powerful and seemingly without fear.
Sennett broke with Biograph to found Keystone Comedies, and Normand joined him in California; she starred in the first Keystone, The Water Nymph, released in September 1912. Apparently, a personal relationship between Sennett and Normand blossomed about this time as well, and though it was once the source of a popular musical, “Mack and Mabel,” the true nature of their relationship remains unclear. Normand was the Sennett studio’s most significant female star, and as Sennett also discovered and introduced Gloria Swanson, Phyllis Haver, Betty Compson and Carole Lombard, that’s saying a lot. Normand also began to direct in 1914, although more out of necessity than any artistic need. One reason Charlie Chaplin was allowed to direct so early in his Keystone career was that he objected to taking direction from Normand, complaining about it to Sennett.
Normand entered into an immensely popular series of films co-starring Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle as sidekick, with titles such as Fatty and Mabel Adrift (1915) and Fatty and Mabel at the San Diego Exposition (1916) being among the best remembered. It is said that the relationship, such as it was, between Sennett and Normand foundered in the summer of 1915, nevertheless, Sennett decided to produce a feature starring Normand and built the Mabel Normand Studio next door to Keystone; it was a necessary move as the Keystone studio didn’t have the right infrastructure to make such a film. Normand was 24 years old at the time; the studio with her name above the gate made only one film, Mickey (1918), a sentimental melodrama in the style of Griffith spiced with comic touches. Mickey was tied up in post-production so long that by the time it was released, Normand had already left Sennett for the Goldwyn Studio and had been working there a year. Mickey, aided by a hit song and a successful merchandising campaign, proved Normand’s most successful film, but Sennett had lost legal control of it, and neither shared in its profits.
Normand’s sojourn at Goldwyn resulted in disappointing returns, and in 1920, Sam Goldwyn was happy to sell Sennett back her contract. During this time, Normand had become dependant on cocaine and began to suffer months-long periods of illness where she could not work. Once back at Sennett, she made Molly O (1920), a property more or less modeled right after Mickey; it was enormously successful. However, on February 1, 1922, director William Desmond Taylor was shot in the back and killed, and Normand was unfortunate enough to be the last person to see him alive. Although she had nothing to do with Taylor’s murder, her name was added early on to a long list of suspects in the still unsolved case. Although her reputation was sullied, Normand made one more feature with Sennett, The Extra Girl (1923), which remains the most frequently seen of her films, and one of her best. Although it opened to enthusiastic crowds and good reviews, at a New Year’s Eve party in 1923, Normand was witness at yet another shooting, this time of playboy Courtland S. Dines, by Normand’s chauffer, with her gun. Dines survived, but Normand’s reputation was mortally wounded.
Although publicly Sennett declared that he planned to continue making films with Normand, in private they agreed to end their association. In 1926, Normand married to actor Lew Cody and made five films with Hal Roach. They were her last, for in February 1927 Normand fell prey to her final bout with illness, which claimed her at the age of 37 after three years of slowly declining health. Though tuberculosis was given as cause, research in the late twentieth century revealed that Normand may have died from a disease that was carried congenitally through her family line. Altogether Mabel Normand appeared in about 230 films and directed 16 of them; roughly 45 percent of her titles survive. It is not as generous a bequest as it sounds; a third of that total consists of 1914 films in which she co-starred with Chaplin, and the remainder includes only two of her Goldwyn features and one Vitagraph. At her peak, Normand was worshipped by scores of women who admired for being wealthy, independent, fashionable and flamboyant, not to mention well-read and eloquent in interviews. She remains one of the most captivating and unique figures among American silent screen stars. Uncle Dave 2/11/2008
Three Reviews of Disgusting Movies
USS VD: Ship of Shame (1942)P
The DE 733, a destroyer escort vessel, pulls into port with a gaping hole in her hull from a torpedo attack. At first, her men are curiously silent as to the cause of the disaster which those remaining are so lucky to have escaped. As a Navy commandant (Will Wright) has a casual sit down with the ship’s Executive Officer (Myron McCormick), the details emerge; after a long tour, the men are anxiously awaiting a period of leave and are excitedly discussing the prospect of linking up with women in the port city. The ship’s doctor (Archie Twitchell) is genuinely concerned by reports linking the ship’s destination with rampant strains of venereal disease and by the naïveté of the crew – one sailor, Windy (unidentified actor), is passing out mysterious pills said to cure VD. Doc does everything in his power to try to inform the men, and even motivates the Executive Officer to give a lengthy speech on the perils of VD, the use of condoms and to encourage abstinence, which is heeded by few.
During leave, several of the men go out in search of loose women; one of them, Chicken (Keefe Brasselle), gets cold feet but manages to find a “nice girl” instead, Margaret (unidentified actress). Back out on the open ocean, the piper is paid, as various men begin to turn up with cases of VD, the ravages of which are unflinchingly shown before the camera. Chicken is the one sailor courageous enough to name the source of his ailment, and back in the port city Margaret is informed, saving her life. On the ocean, however, the men of the DE 733 are forced to contend with their dangerous mission and to rise with whatever resources they have to fulfill their duty; with illness affecting so many crew members, it proves a daunting task indeed.
R
Despite the occasional amusing line of dialogue, such as “Put it on before you put it in,” this is not a party film; USS VD: Ship of Shame is guaranteed to throw cold water on any smoker or stag at which it might be shown. Although sponsored by the United States Navy and used exclusively by them during World War II and for some time after, this film was produced by Paramount utilizing a regular feature unit and even some familiar Hollywood character actors. It is a feature, the original version running some 62 minutes, though some DVD vendors have trimmed it down to around 46 minutes to minimize its slow-moving story. In 1945, the Navy re-titled this film “The Story of the DE 733,” which was the original title of its script, perhaps so as not to give the game away when it was shown to sailors, and this is the version most often seen, lacking any kind of credits – the director of the film remains unknown.
For many viewers, the most memorable and disturbing parts of the picture takes place in “Doc’s” office; and the gross-out factor is certainly in force – the military has a way of seeking out its most advanced cases of VD for use in films of this kind. However, USS VD: Ship of Shame is notable as an early instance where the U.S. Navy employs a narrative to get across a message to its sailors as opposed to the ordinary documentary format. Few subsequent U.S. military films of this kind would be quite as elaborate, or as long, as USS VD: Ship of Shame is; the battle scenes and shots of suffering sailors are quite effective and the film as whole is very professionally made. It demonstrates to what extent the U.S. Navy was willing to go to convince its sailors to “keep those 13 buttons buttoned.”
It is included on the DVDs:
Sex and Buttered Popcorn Vol. 1: Tease, Sleaze and Social Disease E 20317
Atomic Age Classics Vol. 4: Venereal Disease and You E 147238
There is also a cheap DVD version where it is paired with “Red Nightmare” starring Jack Webb. Uncle Dave 2/23/08
Army Medicine in Vietnam (1970)Documentary/Short
Length: 27 minutes
U. S. Army ~ producer
P
This documentary film, made by the U.S. Army during the Vietnam conflict, opens with the topic of how helicopters have changed the very nature of transportation of wounded in the field. Although onsite medivac units are still used to some extent, the constantly shifting battle lines in Vietnam direct most patient traffic to the permanent, modern hospital facilities located behind enemy lines. Once in the operating room, several surgical procedures are performed on catastrophically wounded soldiers; during extended operating room sequences sometimes the narrator breaks off and the voice of the doctor performing the procedure describes what is happening. The inflatable plastic cast is demonstrated. Once out of the operating room, the film moves to show overcrowded urban areas in Vietnam, with their unsanitary open air markets and poor standards for promotion of health. We are told that medicine in Vietnam is 300 years behind the times, less than a thousand native doctors practice in-country, and that folk medicine is used as a predominant form of treatment.
Next is another operating room sequence; where an African-American soldier caught in a gas explosion is being debrieded. A bullet is extracted harmlessly from between an eyeball and its socket; this demonstrates the effectiveness of pre-operative x-rays. The action moves on with an off-hours MEDCOM unit as they go out to treat among the native Vietnamese; along their itinerary is a leper colony. The narrator credits the clean, modern hospitals and expert Army medical personnel for creating within the conflict “the lowest casualties and highest return to duty rate of any war.”
R
Nothing can prepare a viewer for the sheer extent of languorously filmed, indescribably horrendous and grisly footage in “Army Medicine in Vietnam;” it’s far worse than the nastiest commercial horror film you’ve ever seen. And while the gross out meter is set to about “11” for three quarters of this fugitive Army oeuvre, any morbid curiosity about titles like these is best left unsatisfied; unless you are a researcher in the medical practices of the Vietnam War you wouldn’t need to see it, and shouldn’t.
The purpose of this picture is stated at least twice; to expose doctors, nurses and medical students to the wide range of treatment options in the Vietnam Theater, cases of the kind seldom seen back in the United States. The Army was in dire need of medical personnel in Vietnam and made this as a recruiting tool for prospective medical staff; that anyone would be motivated to go over after viewing “Army Medicine in Vietnam” seems like a long shot at best. Although crowded with unrelenting horrors, this is not a “horror movie;” the victims – soldiers and civilian alike – are real people, and these poor devils deserve a right to some privacy. Apparently that wasn’t a primary concern for the Army when they made this terribly, terribly invasive film.
Some low level DVD manufacturers who vend primarily at internet auction sites have marketed it in the context of a “vintage Vietnam film,” yet it has no value whatever as “nostalgia;” copies are also traded in the video underground. It is not an appropriate choice for your film clubs, societies, private screenings, parties, as background to an industrial music band, or for any other purpose that places this work in the public context. The audience will just simply walk out, and those who view will be rewarded with residual nightmares that grad+ually come from having seen “Army Medicine in Vietnam.” Uncle Dave 2/26/08
Response to imdb post on Pier Paolo Pasolini's Salò (1975) I would be curious to know, in general, the difference in response to Salo from Americans (north and south), Europeans, Asians, etc. who have viewed this film. If you respond to this post could you identify the general area of your culture and a short review giving your personal feeling about the film?
goldenboi thank you for asking such a relevant and thought provoking question. I'm in my mid-forties and live in Michigan, USA, but when I saw Salò I was thirty and living in the Los Angeles area - I viewed a bootleg copy of the film, and then booted that and sent it to friends back in the mid-west. The response among my circle was unanimous" Salò is one of the greatest and most consequential works of film ever - it is the presentiment of evil. Three-quarters of the way in my stomach began to hurt. But it was a good hurt in that I was learning a valuable life lesson from a great master. Only Pasolini could have made it; for me, its like the flipside to the St. Matthew Gospel that he made, my favorite religious film.
I feel it is a very MORAL film - in the United States there were a number of shill producers, operating for decades, who marketed weak sex films under the premise that they were not of prurient interest, and made in fulfillment of some obligation to morality and the public good. With all of that, none of these films achieved that goal - but Salò does. It truly has NO prurient interest - every viewer is sickened equally, and the effect is gradual - and it shows us why morality exists - because if we didn't have it, society would self-destruct and we would descend into animaility. What mere movie could be more consequntial than that?
In the United States we have a reputation for having a strong religious right, and in Italy it might be assumed that there would be widespread objection to Salò. But I don't think it's really on their radar screen; Salò has always been poorly distributed here and it is superficially regarded as an obscure art film, and now it is an old film, which will tend to limit its audience to those who would actively look for it.
Although I think everyone of adult age and mind should see it, I don't mind that Salò remain in the realm of specialist viewing. Like the Marquis de Sade work on which it is based, it is not for general readers, though another aspect Salò shares with 120 Days in Sodom is that if you really want know something about the nature of evil, this is about the best place to look. It is a great, great work. Uncle Dave 2/29/08