Ulalume
Joe Cocker and Bob Dylan
Image courtesy of Eddie
Christmas 2014 – and what have you done? Gluttony, jealousy, wrath…getting drunk and falling down…presents, presents, presents. P is listening to (& loving) his new vinyl (!) record, ‘Lost on the River: the new basement tapes’, featuring various artists adding melody and shape to some lyrics of Bob Dylan stuck in a drawer since 1967. Best so far: ‘Down on the Bottom’, ‘Kansas City’, ‘Liberty Street’, ‘Florida Key’ and the title track (# 12). Maybe a review in the fullness of time (at least 20 more listens first). Abject lesson to all: don’t throw away your turntable! Never discard your…
Continue Reading →National Gallery of Victoria
December 2014 TVC wandered mainly in the European wing this trip but the floating wooden Japanese village by Takahiro Iwasaki was a highlight, as were hardy perennials ‘The Garden of Love’ by Vivarini (1465-70), with its formal marble fountain bordered by trellised fruits (tomatoes? pomegranates? Triffids?); Jan Brueghel’s ‘Calvary’ (c. 1610) with its blue oils on copper and a harsh landscape with dogs and prurient audience watching the faith-man suffer; a little ‘St Jerome’ (c. 1540) peering into the blue distance in which birds wheel like bomber-planes; Poussin’s ‘The Crossing of the Red Sea’ (1632-4) and its choppy sea and…
Continue Reading →Piercing the Arras of Canonical Poetry
Poetry is the line of guys doing a Mexican wave in school; the lady laughing in church; the breeze in the trees and your hair on a still day. First lines in poems are for indices only: here, TVC gives you some random, stellar lines from virtuoso poems. And down by the brimming river I heard a lover sing under the arch of a railway: ‘love has no ending’ (W. H. Auden, As I walked Out One Evening) I do not stir. The frost makes a flower, the dew makes a star, the dead bell, the dead bell. (Sylvia Plath…
Continue Reading →The Phoney Chinese Box in Film
L found one in New York!
Walk into any Chinatown in the world and you will struggle to find these. You can buy them online but they are not cheap. Yet they seem to show up, unbilled, in every other film and television show. Our list is below, suggested additions are welcome: Affliction AGL gas advertisement Anchorman: the Legend of Ron Burgundy The Bank Bewitched Big Bang Theory Bobby Borgen (Danish TV) Bugsy The Caretaker Catch Me if you Can Columbo Curb Your Enthusiasm Decoding Annie Parker Deconstructing Harry Dexter Election End of Days Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Family Guy A Few Good Men…
Continue Reading →Vale Mike Nichols
NOVEMBER 19, 2014 VALE Mikhail Igor Peschkowsky (Mike Nichols) November 6, 1931 – November 19, 2014 Nicholls was multifaceted, building a career in live comedy, theatre, films and television. Though he had a reputation as a golden boy (making his film debut Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? directing Burton and Taylor, cleverly innovating techniques to enhance the claustrophobic intimacy of that night from hell, and winning a best director gong the next year by casting against stereotype in The Graduate) he had as many flops as hits but they remained interesting. His routines with Elaine May in the 1950s and…
Continue Reading →