Francois, Francoise, Charlotte, Catherine, David, Tom

A relaxing Sunday with warmer weather, the newspapers and some interesting stories on favourites of ours, before cooking dinner and later unwinding with a drink at hand, for that 1940s wartime saga HOME FIRES ....

An interesting interview with Francois Ozon (right) in "The Irish Times" where the gay French director talks about his new film THE NEW GIRLFRIEND (about to open here) and has some interesting comments, particularly on those films of his featuring women like Deneuve or Rampling. As the paper's feature (by Tara Brady) says: "8 WOMEN brought together France’s grandest dames for a 1950s-set musical murder mystery; 5x2 plays five key scenes from a divorced couple’s relationship backwards; SWIMMING POOL exuded Hitchcockian menace as Charlotte Rampling became a young woman’s reluctant caregiver and voyeur; POTICHE saw Catherine Deneuve as a rejected trophy wife, lead her husband’s employees to rebel.

Many of Ozon’s films are smaller, more tightly focused; TIME TO LEAVE sees a young man push everyone away as he enters the final stages of terminal cancer".

"Charlotte Rampling is one of many actors who have returned again and again to the troupe of Ozon players. Others include Ludivine Sagnier and Catherine Deneuve.

“There is a lot of pleasure in working with women,” says Ozon. “Very often actresses are more pleasurable and easier to work with than men. There are some actors I work with and once is enough. But there are others, like Charlotte, who have a depth and maturity.”

What is it, I wonder, about French cinema’s love affair with a certain kind of British woman, such as Rampling, Jane Birkin and Kristin Scott Thomas.

“In France we have a fascination with foreign actresses,” Ozon says. “One of the most popular French actresses of the 1970s was Romy Schneider who was German. And then there are the English actresses who fell in love with French men and come to France. They often tell me the French offer very good parts as a woman gets older. In England or America they get to play the mother or the grandmother.”

Ozon has had Hollywood offers since Swimming Pool became a global sensation, in 2003. But the director is not for turning.

“In America, film is not about art or culture. It’s a business. So they make movies for teenagers, because it’s easier. And they have a different way of working. The producer does not direct the film, but they do make all of the decisions. The director is a technician more than an artist. I don’t want to work that way. I don’t feel the necessity of losing my soul.” 

Charlotte Rampling herself is interviewed too in "The Daily Telegraph" - 'Le Legende' at 69 now feels she has "the face she has earned". Like Catherine Deneuve her career spans 50 years and she still works now, turning down scripts she does not like - "it has to be something that makes me want to leave the house, where I can stay very happily with my books and my cats". Presumably, like playing a barrister in that second series of BROADCHURCH for British television recently (we loved the first series, the second less so... ). She has come a long way from the 'partying Sixties It-girl' with The Look, as exemplified by her breakthrough film GEORGY GIRL in 1966. Interesting to see that this year she is starring with Tom Courtenay (another Sixties actor in it for the long haul) in 45 YEARS, by Andrew Haigh (LOOKING tv series, WEEKEND) which is an unsettling portrait of a marriage. . She credits Ozon and working with him on UNDER THE SAND as revitalising her and re-realising her potential as a cinema actor. She is as busy now as she has ever been: "I'm working because good work is coming"

Catherine Denueve, another Ozon regular, could probably say the same. Her STANDING TALL was the opening film at this year's Cannes Film Festival, and as the Times put it: "Deneuve adds punch to delinquent drama", where she is the steely judge in this gritty downbeat drama. The critics were not sneering, as at last year's opener GRACE OF MONACO. Let's hope London sees this new Deneuve drama before too long .... I found Catherine hilarious in Ozon's POTICHE with her portly housewife out jogging and communicating with nature, before taking over the family factory to avert a strike and then going into politics, and her dancing with the even portlier Depardieu a delicious treat, with that Seventies background, and the increasingly gay son (Jeremie Rennier). See Ozon label for reviews on all these, his serious TIME TO LEAVE is devastating too. 

BBC4 ran a fascinating documentary as well on French popular song - chanson - where a very spry Petula Clark, now 82, took us through the golden years of French popular song from Edith Piaf and Charles Trenet, including Petula's own French career, to that great early Sixties era, with Francoise Hardy and the others. Francoise was the Face of the early sixties, her Vogue 4-track EPs were the first records I bought, even before The Beatles. Utter bliss then. Francoise too is still going and still singing though the hair is short and silver grey now. 

Tom joins the Hockney set

David Hockney is back in the news too with a new exhibition at the Annely Juda Gallery in London, with some fascinating new paintings. The artist, now 77, is selling that house in Bridlington  in East Yorkshire, where his assistant Dominic Elliott died in 2013. His new work includes 'The Potted Palm' - below - which include Olympic diver Tom Daley and his partner scriptwriter Dustin Lance Black, who are now part of the Hockney circle, David said he likes Tom and praised his coming out last year, of course Tom does lots of diving into those blue pools, but not making "a bigger splash"! Hockney - subject of many posts here, see label - recently bemoaned the demise of what he calls Bohemia, the lifestyle once led by gays, who now want to get married, settle down and have children - he finds them boring and conservative, wanting to lead ordinary lives ... He now goes to bed at nine, and don't go to parties or films as he has got increasingly deaf. He continues to work though, as he says "When I'm painting, I feel 30. Of course I have no plans to retire, artists don't retire. So I'll go on until I fall over, dying ideally at the easel". One somehow feels that other blonde painter who smoked endlessly - Joni Mitchell, maybe still in a coma and also in her Seventies, would somehow agree. Hockney also said in another recent interview that "maybe" the love of his life was Gregory Evans, his 62 year old manager, they were lovers for over a decade but have worked together for 40 years - not Peter Schlesinger of A BIGGER SPLASH then ... The new paintings are certainly fascinating and sees Hockney going in a new direction. 

Binge on boxsets ...

Having a binge with boxsets seems to be the new way to watch television - not just an episode a week any more. and now that Netflix can put whole series on-line, one can certainly binge on them - I am rationing my GRACE & FRANKIE episodes (as per recent post), and got their HOUSE OF CARDS reboot on dvd. Has television ever been better? Despite all the crap stuff, there are some terrific series out there, our Sky Atlantic being particularly good (like HBO with THE NORMAL HEART and other dramas). PENNY DREADFUL is particularly stunning - amazing sets and gothic horror mixing in Frankenstein's monster, Dorian Gray, bloody vampires, werewolves and other assorted Victorian nightmares - Eva Green, Rory Kinnear (a touching monster, left), Timothy Dalton, Billie Piper, Helen McCrory and upcoming Douglas Hodge and Patti Lupone will keep one watching .... not for the faint-hearted! I have not even got around to GAME OF THRONES or BREAKING BAD or ...

THE AFFAIR looks like another must see, after recent stunning series like HAPPY VALLEY and the delicious Sky sitcom by Ruth Jones: STELLA  - now on Series 4 with those inhabitants of Pontyberry in deepest Wales. More please ! Hard to believe Ruth's Stella was also GAVIN & STACEY's Nessa and LITTLE BRITAIN's Myfanwy (with Daffydd, the only gay in the village) and played Hattie Jacques too. Actress and writer Ruth, right, with Patrick Baladi. 

Incidentally, I will have to catch the new MAD MAX: FURY ROAD this week, I need a big screen experience with an action movie everyone seems to love .... I will probably be seeing it in 3D!

BB. King, RIP.

"The thrill is gone" indeed. Glowing notices just now for the late B.B. King (1925-2015) who has died aged 89. The blues legend and ace guitarist is probably the last of that dying breed, those Delta bluesmen (like Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker) who burst into the mainstream in the 1960s, as the young English rhythm'n'blues admirers like Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, The Rolling Stones etc. covered their songs and wanted to play with them. B.B. played to the hippies at the Filimore in San Francisco and toured endlessly - I saw a concert of his in London in 1971 - he was also a regular at The White House. 
That journey from share-cropping to being feted as the best blues musician of his era, with those plaintive songs and soaring guitar, can really never happen again. Like "Howlin' Wolf's London Sessions" album with Clapton and the others, B.B. also recorded with the likes of Clapton and U2. Aretha covered B.B.'s "The Thrill Is Gone" and terrific though it is, it can't match B.B. RIP indeed. 
B.B. shows that playing the blues is a lifelong gig - he was doing over 100 concerts a year well into his 80s. 

Something for the weekend ....

Another chance to use this stunning photograph of Joan Crawford, by ace Magnum photographer Eve Arnold - from a new book on her; EVE ARNOLD: MAGNUM LEGACY. 

I have done several posts on Arnold (who died in 2012 three months short of her 100th birthday - she was born in 1912) on her work with the Magnum photo-agency and had published several books, including one on Marilyn Monroe - Arnold had covered the shoot of THE MISFITS in Nevada in late 1960 and also did several shoots with Marilyn in the '50s, they seemed to get on well.

She also did a wonderful book (FILM JOURNAL) on the various locations she covered in the '50s and '60s when she photographed almost everybody from Mangano to Loren and Anouk to Vitti and Vanessa - she must have been as prolific as Bob Willoughby as she too was on the sets of some of my favourite movies such as BLOW-UP, MODESTY BLAISE and JUSTINE. Check the Eve Arnold label for lots more of her wonderful images, from that great era of the photo-journalists for  magazines like LOOK and LIFE.

Design: 1970s 'sunshine pop' (& '90's Innocence)

Colin sent me a link to this intriguing and very tuneful cover of Carole King's "I Feel The Earth Move" by a group, Design - it is so very 1973, this is exactly how we looked then (like me and my first colour television, right). But how come I never heard of Design before? 

There is another video clip too, showcasing their great vocal harmonies:  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WtN5aW60Vc

Their website looks intriguing , with all the details .... http://www.designvocalgroup.com/

Its like going back to those heady days of TAKE THREE GIRLS on the BBC.

A CD of two of their albums has just arrived - I suspect Colin had something to do with it. The notes include "Tripping the light fantastic of breezy west coast harmony pop mixed with atmospheric melodic folk pop - here are the third and fourth albums by the UK six piece vocal group whose sound was described as "the perfect musical accompaniment to a garden party in the blazing sunshine". Get ready for summer then ..... 
The group were together almost 8 years, they recorded more than 150 radio shows and appeared on more than 50 television shows. They also released five albums and thirteen singles. Sadly, a foundling member, Geoff Ramseyer, died aged 25 after leaving the group in 1976 - he is in the clip above, in the floral shirt. The rest of the group later disbanded and did different things - moving to Australia etc, but got together for their reissued recordings in 2011. Thanks again, Colin. 

In a way it reminds me of this great vocal track from the 1990s, by another harmony group Innocence, and it also mixes in a hint of Pink Floyd ! Chill out then.

Comng soon: TEN SONGS OF  MY LIFE - as based on Martin's Facebook item. I think it will be more than ten though, at least twenty ... 

The life and death of a film magazine

Issue 3: December 1954

My early cinema-going years seem to have coincided with the run of that British film magazine "Films and Filming" which I have written about here a lot, and used lots of covers from its glory years. It began in October 1954 – the year I began seeing movies, aged 8 in Ireland (JOHNNY GUITAR being the first film I saw – what a vivid introduction to movie! – followed by A STAR IS BORN and going with my father to see those 1954 westerns like DRUM BEAT, THE COMMAND, SITTING BULL …. ). I did not catch up with "F&F" though until the Sixties ...

The recent job lot of 40  1950s issues
I got  (for a very good price) on eBay. 

I caught up with “Films and Filming” (after growing out of “Picture Show”, “Fans Star Library” and “Photoplay” and Hollywood magazines like “Screen Album” or “Movieland and TV Time”) about 1962, when I was 16 and eagerly devoured each issue - it was a new way of looking at movies and their makers and that expanding European cinema. The look of the magazine had a makeover then – for the new happening decade. It also had a lot of contact advertisements and a certain gay vibe, as per those ads for Vince’s Man Shop (see Fashon label). I put an ad in myself when I was 17 ("Boy 17 seeks penfriends, male/female, under 21" – what is amusing now is that a 17 year old would find over 21’s too old …) and got replies from all over the world: England, Malta, USA and Australia, and am still in touch with one of them, Mike now in San Francisco, a Worthing boy, who became a good friend.  I moved to London in 1964 when 18 so "F&F" became my monthly bible for movies. (Penfriends - writing each other letters - was what people did then, before Facebook, cellphones and the internet). 

200th issue, May 1971

100th issue, Jan 1963

I worked for the magazine for a year, when between careers, in 1975-76, doing subscriptions, writing some reviews etc. and got to know the friendly crowd there then: the reclusive owner, Philip Dosse, and his distribution manger, Tony Fleck, and Olive who did the accounts, and the guys working with me, Brian, Jim, Roy, Baxter, and Pamela whom I went to various shows with. We never saw the editor, Robin Bean, who it seems only emerged at night and did all the work on the magazine from his apartment at Earls Terrace, off Kensington High Street. 
The magazines were published on a shoe-string, from a basement flat in Artillery Mansions in Victoria Street. These were quality magazines on fine art paper, “Films and Filming” was one of a stable of seven, all published by Dosse’s Hansom Books – there were “Arts and Artists”, “Books and Bookmen”, “Music and Musicians”. “Films and Filming” was their big seller, as was the authorative “Plays and Players” – a great record of London theatre during those years.

The subscriptions were all done by hand, in that pre-computer era, written on cards, and subscriber’ names and addresses were stamped on tin plates for the machine to print them out on envelopes. Of course it would all be computerised now. 
Instead of being out on the London arts scene as a major arts magazines publisher, Dosse - a genuine eccentric - would sit and stuff magazines into envelopes and answer the switchboard, we had several interesting conversations about the history of the magazine. Unfortunately it did not pay very well, so after a year I left for “pastures new”. There were some binders and back issues available too.

I later got to know the F&F editor Robin Bean when the magazine was in decline by the late Seventies – but it had a good run since 1954, for a private publisher. “Sight and Sound” by contrast was funded by the BFI, practically their house magazine. “Films and Filming” was the only quality British film monthly then, as “S & S" was a quarterly, published four times a year, until it went monthly in the '90s. (I liked the ‘60s and ‘70s “Sight and Sound” – it had a nice style and was a contrast to “F&F”, but I did not care for its monthly rebirth). “Films and Filming” by then had departed the scene. Philip Dosse could not keep it going and in 1980 the magazine folded after his suicide.

I exchanged lots of ideas with Robin Bean, its editor, and still have his letters. He was very bitter about the way the magazine folded leaving them all unpaid. I did some reviews for him, and started a video column for that new sensation: the emergence of VHS and how it revolutionised our film-viewing. Now one could own and collect films, as we spent the ‘80s scouring “Radio Times” for movies to record, as one’s collection of video-cassettes grew, and then pre-recorded movies to buy!

1965 pop movies issue

Bean tried to keep the magazine going, but did not succeed (he died in 1992, aged 53, of asthma and bronchitis, according to "Variety", whose obituary said: "After studying at the London School of Economics, Bean joined the magazine in 1961 and edited it from 1968 to 1980, attracting notoriety with his sexually explicit picture spreads. He later launched the monthly clone, “Films,” which ran until 1985, and “Movie Scene” (1985-86). He subsequently worked as a free-lance assistant to director Michael Winner, a neighbour"), The magazine was revived and had a new look, for a few years, under the editorship of well-known film writers and critics Allen Eyles and then John Russell Taylor. I still bought a lot of issues, but it was not the same. Belows right: the revamped 1980s style.

Nice to see the old “Films & Filming” issues command a market on eBay, where I have now purchased all those 1950s issues from before my time, so I have the complete run from Oct 54 to Dec 1959 and into the '60s and '70s. 
All magazines have their great era and "F&F" was great in the '50s and '60s, and up to about the mid-'70s (1974 being particularly good). But looking at a 1960 issue and a 1980 one the decline is sadly evident. It was certainly an achievement to have kept the magazine going during those great decades for movies charting the changing movie scene. They are still very readable and collectable. I trust my posts on it help keep the memory of the magazine alive. 

As I said here back in 2010: it introduced so many of us to the potential of cinema as just more than mere entertainment - it covered the best of world cinema with interviews and features on and by all the leading players and directors. That 1961 Italian cinema issue is priceless now with its features by Antonioni, Visconti, Fellini, Pasolini etc. Interesting too seeing how the magazine changed from the staid '50s through the liberated '60s (when being the zeitgeist that it was, it became THE magazine for gay cineastes) to the mature '70s. I could spend hours going through those bound copies...

There are several histories of "Films and Filming" including at this link: 

www.academia.edu/2023952/_A_sensible_magazine_for_intelligent_film-goers._Notes_for_a_History_of_Films_and_Filming_1954-1990 

and a shorter,witty feature in Number Two of the gay (or queer as they call it) magazine LITTLE JOE in 2011 by Justin Bengry, whom I corresponded with about the magazine and my memories of it, which he incorporated in his feature. 
Below: the magazine's 30th anniversary tribute, an issue from each year from October 1954 to October 1984. (click images to enlarge...)

A week of re-viewings ...

Since I went over to Sky Movies recently, a lot more classics have been on tap, its rather nice to settle down once again and see a favourite .... so, before we head off to some new movies - good, and bad - here's another canter through old favourites.

VERTIGO. Theres a special intensity to this 1958 Hitchcock classic, its mesmerising watching it again, noticing how wonderful Barbara Bel Geddes is as Midge, and drowning in that swooning score by Bernard Herrmann, Kim may have been a replacement but is the perfect actress here. At first met by mixed reviews (I remember seeing it as a kid), this tale of an acrophobic ex-detective following a beautiful woman through a dreamy San Francisco, is now revered a a true classic. More on this and that "Sight & Sound" poll at Hitch label ... more Hitch horror in:

THE BIRDS, 1963. I simply never tire of it - every element works, and Tippi Hedren is just perfect here, whereas I do not care for her in MARNIE much at all. The premise of this classic chiller - a town in terror when thousands of birds unite to attack the residents - gets no less terrifying with age. Hitch's third Daphne du Maurier adaptation (by Evan Hunter) creates an atmosphere of muggy dread as the Brenner family board up their house against the invading birds. Visiting socialite Melanie Daniels (Tippi) plus Mitch's clingy mother (Jessica Tandy) and sister are trapped - then Melanie goes upstairs .... Bodega Bay looks marvellous and Rod Taylor is just right as the guy at the centre of it all, as the teasing interplay between him and Melanie turns serious. Suzanne Pleshette is terrific too.

Watching BELL BOOK & CANDLE yet again I really like the Zodiac Club, tucked away around the corner, where Hermione Gingold presides over that beatniky offbeat scene and Kim Novak lurks in the shadows while a young Jack Lemmon plays those bongo drums ... its a great 'Christmas in New York' movie too, Kim is at her zenith, its Stewart's last romantic lead and director Richard Quine and ace cameraman James Wong Howe make it look great. Apparantly, as per other posts, gay writer John Van Druten meant the witches to be code for the secret life of gays in 1950s New York ...

SABRINA. A favourite Billy Wilder, enough said? Wilder's films are rather problematic for me - some I revere (SOME LIKE IT HOT will always be in my top 10, as per recent post on it, below and we highly rate DOUBLE INDEMNITY, SUNSET BOULEVARD, ONE TWO THREE) - but others of his I have no wish to see ... this 1954 one is a perfect treat as Audrey comes back from Paris with that Givenchy wardrobe, and starts to romance William Holden, upsetting the family's plans (love her "Oh, I've learned a lot" to Mrs Larrabee, eager to put the chauffeur's daughter in her place) - so older brother Humphrey Bogart (maybe too old, but who cares) steps in, and there's that New York skyline. Martha Hyer scores also as the rich girl eager to marry Holden and who has no desire to spend the first 18 hours of her proposed marriage "on a plane, sitting up"). A witty script and a great cast make this a fine romantic comedy, and it looks great too.

THE PASSENGER. Michelangelo Antonioni made his name in the early Sixties with that great quartet of films featuring Monica Vitti, which included L'AVVENTURA, but this intriguing 1975 anti-thriller is one of his greatest works even if it seems a little pretentious now (I wrote a review of it at the time, when I was 29, for a magazine "Films Illustrated"). It was long out of circulation owing to the intractability of its star, Jack Nicholson - who owned the rights (it couldn't even be shown in full at the 2005 BFI Antonioni retrospective, thankfully the dvd came out not too long after). Jack plays a jaded reporter in Africa, who switches identities with the dead man in the next room at the hotel, and finds himself leading a gun-runner's life .... then there is that amazing ending . More on this at Antonioni and Passenger labels.

THE EAGLE. Kevin MacDonald's 2011 film of Rosemary Sutcliff's popular novel "The Eagle of the North" works surprisingly well - a solid action film capturing the period and providing a tangled interplay of pride loyalty and masculinity. It gives Channing Tatum one of his best roles as Marcus Flavius Aquila, the Roman son in Britain trying to save his father's destroyed reputation, as he and slave Esca (Jamie Bell) head north of the border over Hadrian's Wall to the wild country beyond ... Master and slave find their roles reversed and keeps us guessing. It certainly reboots the Peplum genre.

MARGIN CALL. J C Chandor, assembling a cracking cast for his debut, depicts 36 hours at a fictional Wall Street bank on the eve of the economic meltdown of 2008 (which cost me my job too). Risk assessment manager Stanley Tucci is fired; Zachery Quinto completes his research and makes an alarming discovery. This well-crafted thriller is gripping as panic spreads through the chain of command - Kevin Spacey and Jeremy Irons excel too.

INGLORIOUS BASTERDS. If not quite the masterpiece we were told to expect, Tarantino's pastiche of war films is still rollicking good fun and has all the classic Tarantino ingredients. A celebration of vengance, its an audacious, self-indulgent take on the Second World War. Christopher Waltz deservedly won an Oscar for his incendiary turn as the "Jew Hunter", as Brad Pitt and his men track him down. Love the sequence with the French cinema and Melanie Laurent's plan to do away with the Nazi high command ..... I have been enjoying Quentin's KILL BILL saga too as it re-runs here, and now to tackle DJANGO UNCHAINED  .....  

THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE. Tony Richardson's 1968 re-telling while not successful at the time, looks marvellous now - great cast, great costumes, bitter irony,and that Victorian era nicely caught. David Hemmings is the ill-fated Nolan, Vanessa Regrave and Jill Bennett are contrasting Victorian ladies - Trevor Howard, John Gielgud and Harry Andrews are the military dunderheads who let it happen ...

A chronicle of events that led to the British involvement in the Crimean War against Russia and which led to the siege of Sebastopol and the fierce Battle of Balaclava on October 25, 1854 which climaxed with the heroic, but near-disastrous cavalry charge made by the British Light Brigade against a Russian artillery battery in a small valley which resulted in the near-destruction of the brigade due to error of judgment and rash planning on part by the inept British commanders .... It may have been a commercial flop, but we liked the look of it at the time, particularly Hemmings in that Hussar uniform - very 1968! More on this at British-1 label. 

Lets go to Greenwich Village in the early sixties ...

Our Sky Arts channel finds some interesting documentaries - I just enjoyed GREENWICH VILLAGE, MUSIC THAT DEFINED A GENERATION, a two-hour 2012 feature I had not seen, written produced and directed by Laura Archibald, which is a real trip down memory lane - 
starting as it does with that video clip of the Mamas & Papas and taking us back to that bright dawn of the early Sixties - even more poignant now as one of the singer/songwriters featured - Joni Mitchell - may be in a coma after her recent collapse. That early mid-60s clip of her singing "Night in the City" is heartbreaking now. Great to see John Sebastian too - I loved The Lovin' Spoonful then. 

Fascinating too seeing those survivors now: Arlo Guthrie, Tom Paxton, Carly Simon and her sister, Judy Collins, Melanie, Buffy St Marie (I had a big poster of her on my wall circa 1967/68), Michelle Phillips, Jose Feliciano, Kris Kristofferson and more as Susan Sarandon narrates. That second Bob Dylan album not only had tracks I love, but it re-defined album cover art, with that great photo, getting away from those posed portraits of 50s albums ... again, it conjures up the moment of being young in the city. 

It explores the music scene in Greenwich Village, New York in the 60's and early 70's. The film highlights some of the finest singer/songwriters of the day, as we see vintage footage of Pete Seeger, Peter Paul and Mary, Woody Guthrie, and that young Bob Dylan - no mention of Joan Baez though ...

Greenwich Village was that melting pot where it came together as singer songwriters and troubadours moved there, taking in folk music, and protest against Middle America, and then the Vietnam war of the Johnson adminstration. HUAC got in the act too with some acts finding themselves blacklisted .... of course a lot of these acts gravitated towards California and the West Coast by the end of the Sixties, as some were accused of "selling out" to the music industry ...
It was though that great time to be young - we felt it in London as well and the counterculture got underway. It was of course that time when being young and living in the city mixing with one's peers was cheap and affordable - unlike now. I loved that Byrds album then - it was the way to look - above: me in 1967 and 1969

RIPs, continued ...

Ruth Rendell (1930-2015), aged 85. British author of thrillers and psychological murder mysteries, also wrote as Barbara Vine. Like Patricia Highsmith her work lent itself to the movies: Chabrol filmed her "A Judgement In Stone" as LE CEREMONIE in 1995, it had also been a British TV series. Others based on her works included THE RUTH RENDELL MYSTERIES, and NO NIGHT IS TOO LONG, A FATAL INVERSION and Almodovar filmed her novel LIVE FLESH.

Ben E. King (1938-2015), aged 76. Vocalist with The Drifters ("Save The Last Dance For Me") who had several hits on his own - "Spanish Harlem" is a favourite, and his megahit "Stand By Me" was re-released several times.

Nigel Terry (1945-2015), aged 69. English stage and film actor who made an impressive debut as Prince John in THE LION IN WINTER, 1968, unphased acting opposite Hepburn and O'Toole, and who did not film again until his King Arthur in John Boorman's EXCALIBUR in 1981. Terry was that rare thing, an actor who did not chase stardom (maybe like his LION co-star John Castle, or Jon Finch). He worked extensively in the theatre and then with Derek Jarman, notably as CARAVAGGIO in 1986, followed by EDWARD II, THE LAST OF ENGLAND, WAR REQUIEM  and BLUE.

"Ruggedly handsome, Terry conveyed an air of brooding taciturnity, one reviewer noting that he seemed to be “forcibly holding himself back until he has a pretext for full-throated rage or lamentation. In the role of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio in Jarman’s re-telling of the life of the hell-raising Baroque painter, he exuded a dangerous intensity as he brawled, gambled, drank and pursued the well-muscled young boys (and girls) he got to pose for him."  (The Guardian)

Television roles included appearing in SPOOKS, FOYLE'S WAR, SILENT WITNESS, WAKING THE DEAD, etc. He later returned to film with O'Toole in TROY in 2004, He was actually the first baby born in Bristol after the war ended in 1945. 

Richard Corliss (1944-2015), aged 71. Respected film critic and magazine editor for TIME magazine, He was also editor-in-chief for FILM COMMENT magazine, which I liked in the 80s. He also wrote three books including "Talking Pictures". His number-one films of the year included MIDNIGHT COWBOY, THE AGE OF INNOCENCE, PERSUASION, PULP FICTION, AMOUR, THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL, I think I would find his reviews interesting.

Erroll Brown (1944-2015), aged 71, lead singer with English group Hot Chocolate ("You Sexy Thing" etc). Martin will accuse me of name-dropping again, if I mention that he came up to me in London nightclub The Talk of the Town (my first and only time there in 1985) and said "I have not seen you here for ages" --- I wonder who he thought I was.

VE day - 70 years ago

It is the 70th anniversary of VE Day, when the Second World War in Europe came to an end, and London is celebrating, with that rather good concert at Horseguards Parade - not just a patriotic singalong but showing quite serious stuff about the war and how it affected people then. I heard all this at first hand as my mother was in London during the Blitz - as she spent 8 years in London from 1934 (when she was 16) to 1942 and she was a Land Girl and trainee hairdresser, so we grew up hearing all about rationing, the blackouts, the doodlebugs, sleeping in air raid shelters and down in the underground stations etc. It affected her nerves really, so she was sent back to Ireland, and resumed her hairdressing, lodged at the guesthouse my father's family ran, and once she met him there was no going back to England .... they married and I came along at the very end of December 1945 - a war baby then! Quentin Crisp on the other hand, as per his memoirs, had a great time in the blitz with those visiting Yanks and the threat of imminent death hanging over everyone - the things that went on in the blackout! 

Celebrations continue on Sunday, but the concert was a fun show, capturing a lot of that wartime experience, and made a change from the other big event of the week - the general election and all the fallout from that as the chattering classes went into overdrive ...

Here at the Projector, we like that 1940s ambience, and those classic British movies made then, capturing it all: I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING, A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH, THIS HAPPY BREED, THE WAY TO THE STARS, IN WHICH WE SERVE, 2000 WOMEN, etc. and those 50s war films about it all: THE CRUEL SEA, ICE COLD IN ALEX, SEA OF SAND, DUNKIRK, SEVEN THUNDERS, and Leacock's 1962 REACH FOR GLORY caught the Home Front nicely and the frustrations of teenagers watching the war from home - its from a book I liked as a teenager, John Rae's "The Custard Boys". . Later films like John Schlesinger's YANKS in 1979 got that 1940s wartime period just right too, whereas Hollywood shoot-em-ups like OPERATION CROSSBOW or the venerable THE GREAT ESCAPE or BATTLE OF BRITAIN did not bother much with period detail, but were engrossing just the same. 

Life during wartime ...

Here in England the Sunday night period drama slot (where one relaxes with a gin and tonic) lately successfully filled by POLDARK (see TV label), has been nicely filled by another easy on the eye period drama: HOME FIRES, set in the early days of World War Two, in a small village and dealing mainly with the women of the Womens' Institute as they fight over leadership of the group and the assorted dramas of the various women ... low key stuff perhaps, but it does what it says on the tin, as one admires the period detail and assorted dramas. One just knows the abused wife will find solace with another woman as we await her hissable husband to get his comeuppance. The two queen bees fighting to take over the Women's Institute are Francesca Annis and Samantha Bond, so posh girls to the fore and let battle commence. Wartime drama serials are a regular tv staple here (FOYLE'S WAR); we fondly remember WISH ME LUCK (female British agents parachuted into France) among others. This new one, while no great shakes, ticks the boxes. Surely they could have found a role for Jane Asher?

Bedsit disco queen

I've put down a novel (by an acclaimed writer) that I just could not get stuck into - not even at the airport last week - and instead picked up a paperback I got well over a year ago - BEDSIT DISCO QUEEN by Tracey Thorn. Who? you may ask .... 

Tracey is half of the 1980s/90s English musical duo Everything But The Girl, most famous for that mesmerising track (and video) "Missing" (with that catchy refrain "and I miss you, like the deserts miss the rain", there are lots of remixes,including by Todd Terry).  Tracey proves a great writer as she looks back on it all with affection and she writes perceptively about the music business and her contribution to it - as she says, she has been called everything from "an indie darling, a middle-of-the-road nobody and a disco diva". In a word, Fab. Its a very readable account of 30 years in the music biz and being in love with music. Its about how she grew up and formed a band in Hull (with Ben Watt, her husband) and became a pop star. The group ran from 1982 to 2000, Tracey then semi-retired to bring up her family, she has three children. Writing the book made her confront what she has done with her life, and take a close look at what she was and how that affected who she is now - I think anyone who writes can relate to that.

I am enjoying reading this and want to make it last. If only one could get similar memoirs from Jimmy Somerville or Marc Almond, Eddi Reader or Roisin Murphy on the group Moloko, or that blissed-out group A Man Called Adam, or The Pet Shop Boys. Its as good as Holly Johnson's "A Bone In My Flute". 

For Rory, Stan, Jeff, Nick and all those disco queens ...

Jane and Lily hit primetime (Netflix)

This amusing poster for the new Netflix series GRACE & FRANKIE (or was it FRANKIE & GRACE?) caught my eye. This the one where Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin (30 years plus after their 9 TO 5) play the wives and 'frenemies' who are floored when their respective husbands Sam Waterston and Martin Sheen reveal they have been a gay couple for 20 years and now want to get married, to each other. 
How do the women cope, re-invent their lives and get over this ? - do they all remain friends? Grace (Jane) thinks she and husband Sheen were "happy enough" like other couples their age - now she feels the marriage was a sham and it would have been better if he had died. A comedy series for the moment then focusing on older women? I signed up for Netflix to see this, but it may be on dvd before too long, like that other Netflix hit series, the Kevin Spacey HOUSE OF CARDS reboot. Who says television is not seizing the moment these days .....  It is good to see Jane back in a meaty role (and looking her age occasionally) and Lily is super here too, the roles (uptight bitch and ageing hippie) give them a lot to play with. They have a good stoned scene coming up too.

Right -  Jane Fonda at one of the press junkets for the series. How does she do it ? - but as Sophia Loren has demonstrated 80 is the new 70. Good to see Tomlin back in circulation again too. I got Netflix on a month's free trial, so have just seen the first episode. Now for some other stuff to put on 'My List'. 

Rita and those Sixties boys ...

Time for some praise for that other Rita we like rather a lot: Rita Tushingham - maybe THE girl of the 60s British Film Scene - Julie Christie (whom we adore) may have been its poster girl, followed by Susannah York, wayward Sarah Miles (we like her a lot too, as per label), Sam Eggar and then those Redgrave girls burst on the scene, and the amazing young Charlotte Rampling - and then of course that sad 60s poster girl I shall be discussing shortly: Carol White.  

First out of the post though was Miss Tushingham with A TASTE OF HONEY in 1961 - her Jo, pregnant by a black sailor was sensational stuff back then, aided by Murray Melvin as the gay friend, who gets his marching orders when Jo's feckess mother Dora Bryan in her best role, returns to take charge. Its a fascinating document of that era, grimy black and white, moonlight flits from furnished rooms, at that Salford (or was it Liverpool?) then. Tush was a Liverpool girl, born in 1942. Shelagh Delaney's play was just perfect for her. We like Tony Richardson's lyrical film, typical of Woodfall Films of the time.  

Rita went on to delight us with her brassy blonde selfish young wife in THE LEATHER BOYS in 1964, driving her husband into another man's arms; was the nice girl friend of Mike Sarne in the gritty Dearden film A PLACE TO GO also then, and we love her as the wide-eyed Irish girl in the Edna O'Brien THE GIRL WITH GREEN EYES, also 1964, with Peter Finch (a companion piece to Desmond Davis's I WAS HAPPY HERE, also exploring the London-Irish scene, with Sarah Miles in 1966) . I love the ending of GIRL WITH GREEN EYES where she and Baba (Lynn Redgrave) move to Engand on the ferry (as I did myself many times back then) and we see her working at that W H Smith store in Notting Hill Gate, just across from the Notting Hill Classic cinema - one of my old stomping grounds. 

We simply love her with Lynn again, as Brenda and Yvonne in the 1967 SMASHING TIME - as per posts on that - Rita, Lynn labels - a Swinging London dream as imagined by George Melly ..... Richard Lester's THE KNACK was super too teaming her with young Michael Crawford and full of marvellous sight gags. It captured the moment perfectly. 

Rita also graduated to big movies, appearing in DR ZHIVAGO, co-starring with Marcello Mastroianni in DIAMONDS FOR BREAKFAST in 1968, with Oliver Reed in THE TRAP (one I must get around to...) and Michael York in THE GURU in India, in 1969 for Merchant Ivory. 

In 1977, she was in the Italian GRAN BOLLITO a stunning movie from Mauro Bolognini - see label. She had an extensive later career in television, and still works now. Did she inspire The Beatles' "Lovely Rita, meter maid ..."?