mozart - the turkish finale - 'amadeus' - video

here is the perfect turkish finale from the film 'amadeus,' directed by the marvelous milos foreman. i dare you not to dig it. peace, and good-night.

custody

i love this shot. it is, of course, a still frame taken from stanley kubrick's wild masterpiece 'a clock-

work orange.' here we see the 'reformed' alex in unfortunate police custody. this is the start of one of the movie's most genuinely terrifying scenes. i don't want to give away too much of the plot, but i love this part. it illustrates that even the most calcified, steeped psociopath can feel panic and fear (and perhaps, even morality) when it comes to the taking of his last breath. this is one of the rare points in the story when alex is not in Control. its bleak and lonely and hard to watch. but i love it. it seems to suggest there are forces at work above and over our small mean population; laws and fates that bend themselves according to an Eternal Universal Standard. its scary because alex is no dummy; he knows the laws can and must apply to himself. unfortunately for his jailers, however... no Sentence is legitimate without a proper hearing. this is the saving grace that grants his escape.

shelley

i don't think shelley duvall gets enough credit. she is invariably the best thing in any movie she's in. i think the entire production of (the very underrated) 'popeye' would've shipwrecked without her fautless and charming protrayal of olive oyl. this shot is from the haunting robert altman film 'three women.' her performance in this film is so real i sometimes forgot i was watching a script. she manages to hold it together and go over the top all the while seeming oblivious to the camera. and i think she's just lovely. her lilting voice has a fragile rare quality i've never heard from anyone else. her often criticized portrayal of wendy torrance in 'the shining' is both horrifying and real. i just love her. nobody looks like her, nobody sounds like her, and nobody acts like her. she is a true cinematic gem.

oh boy

i love this slide. my partner and brother jean-lucien put it together a long time ago. its visually beautiful, but i can only speculate as to what it 'means' to him... but i love the patchwork of the sci-fi magazines and bits of cartridges from an atari 2600. the main image below is the 'butch variety' scarfaced morrissey from his hard, hot video 'boy racer.' i love the fast, hi-energy feel of the whole piece. its hot and charged and makes me almost taste the sugar-rich sparkling sunkist soda. i love my brother. he's the bravest and best there is.

shy eileen

yes, a girl who is always welcome to the 'planetcool' pillowfight... miss bernadette peters, ladies and gentlemen. this is a small shot i captured a long time ago from the 'pennies from heaven' dvd using old equipment, but its still quite lovely after a minimal amount of secondary tricking. i honestly don't think the following words have ever come out of my mouth: "gee, that sure is a rotten picture of bernadette peters." i find it hard to believe anybody has ever said that. she always looks lovely, pale, sexy, and practically perfect. here she is as miss eileen everson from the movie version of 'pennies' co-starring steve martin. if you've never seen it, you're missing a one-of-a-kind film. the musical numbers are astounding. and the bob mackie costumes are virtually deadly. its a sad film, from one point of view. personally, i think the script is just absolutely real. fate and chance and passion and drought all collide in a dazzling downpour of wrong turns and human mistakes. i stand by it. its hard and glittery and gritty and great.

my darling bob

oddly enough, mr. bob hoskins falls into that rare category of 'love at first sight.' i'm pretty sure the first thing i saw him in was 'who framed roger rabbit?' and i must've seen that movie 20 times in the theater. (give me a break, i was 15 years old.) and i soon realized, after one or two screenings, that i had a crush on eddie valiant. i grew to swoon, yes swoon, over his elegant profile, his careful voice... artfully disguised with an american accent. i liked his short but strong pugilistic body frame, and he even went for a topless shot somewhere near the middle of the film. he's really the heavy clamp that held the entire gaudy fantastic production together. i think he's literally in every single scene. his deft handling of the part of the almost-down-and-out private detective anchored all the wild action in a thoroughly believeable, easy to swallow pill. i do not think the film would've worked without the talents of bob hoskins. since then i've seen a great deal more of his work, of course. 'mona lisa' was unsung gem. he was even quite frightening in 'brazil,' and brought me to tears in the british television version of 'pennies from heaven.' this shot is from his portrayal of the possibly-homosexual nightclub owner ownie madden. its from the often brilliant-often askew francis ford coppola production of 'the cotton club.' which is well worth seeing for the musical numbers alone. here's a kiss for you, bob. i love you.

a little glamor, for martha

a couple of nights ago, i told my mother i'd post something especially for her, but i kind of flaked and forgot about it... i remembered it too late, but tonight i decided to 'make good.' i know she's always liked the cool blonde screen queen kim novak. i like her, too... primarily because she reminds me of my mother. its not just because my mother used to mention her a lot, i've always thought they often looked alike. so tonight i went fishing for novak shots, and when i saw this one, i knew i had to post it. she reminds me so much of my mother in this one. the elegance of that neckline, it would suit my mom just as well as it suits kim. her whole look is so alluring and sophisticated... the short hair, her complexion, even the intelligent, mysterious glint in her eyes... it all just made me think of my mom. so this post is especially for her, and i hope she likes it. (although, in all honesty, i think my mother is much prettier than kim. and i'm not just saying that to kiss up... i totally mean it.)

screenland

here's a slice of notebook art i just ran accross whilst looking for some color. on the right, we've got the gorgeously scruffy and admittedly vulgar mr. eddie izzard, showing us he's number one! and on the left is a cutting of some antique screen magazine. that might be gloria swanson with the tigerskin, i can't quite tell. i used the strip as a heading decoration in one of my handwritten journals. i can't stand writing anything on a blank page. i've just got to glue something down to keep the visual hemisphere of my restless brain occupied during those inevitable writing pauses. pardon the four-letter word. i didn't think i needed to airbrush over it; after all, we're all grown-ups here, aren't we?

overlook hotel - july 4th ball 1921

this is (i believe) the final shot from stanley kubrick's 'the shining.' this photograph on the overlook wall, dated july 4th, seems to indicate that saucy jack torrance has indeed, '...always been the caretaker.' its actually not a bad shot of mr. nicholson. and i don't believe i'm wrong when i say i suspect he was superimposed into an actual photograph of partygoers from the 1920's. the other merrymakers in the shot seem to be legitimately antique. perhaps we're to infer that a swinging, jazz-age flapper's ball is close to jack's idea of heaven. not a bad place to spend eternity, if one were to have his choice. (click to enlarge... because size matters.)

fireworks

a splash of scarlet in the sky. god bless america.

royalty

here is the only picture i could find of mrs. shirley russell and mr. ken russell.

happy birthday, ken. i love you. kiss a girl for me.

my sincerest thanks,

almadora

eyesight to the blind : eric clapton and friends - video

its ken russell's birthday. its a rather holy day for me. so i thought i'd let ken take us to church. god bless the freedom of expression, and god bless ken russell. (imogen claire alert at 2:57)

father moon

here is one of my favorite shots from the whole film. it's robert powell as captain walker, alive in his child's imagination, providing light and hope from the periphery of the boy's damaged self. from a filmmaking standpoint, i am still puzzled as to how ken russell got this shot, and got it so flawlessly. just what kind of prop is robert powell holding? is it glass? a reflective web of silk? is it some kind of well-diffused bulb? i still can't tell. all i know is i don't see any wires. and it works. pure genius. wow.

father sun

this is practically the opening shot of 'tommy.' i've seen it hundreds of times... but looking at it just now, i realize that ken must've stood around and waited for the perfect sunset. its not a mat. its not any kind of special effects. (at least none that i've ever heard of.) just robert powell and the sky. and i can even tell its really robert powell. i could pick his shoulders out of a police line up. i don't even think i need to point out the genius of the plain composition. and i've always said that ken russell would've made a great director of silent films. i timed it tonight, and for the first 7:00 full minutes of 'tommy,' there is actually no spoken (or even sung) dialogue. everything is communicated by facial expressions and the lulls and swells in the music. and all of it so artfully done, you almost don't notice the lack of words. honestly, ken proves that sometimes words are entirely unneccsessary. amen.

victoria

ladies and gentlemen, may i present the lovely and talented miss victoria russell. yes, she's the hauntingly beautiful daughter of ken russell. here she is portraying the faithful sally simpson in daddy's stellar production of 'tommy.' she plays the devoted fan who encountered a mean twish of fate after standing against her father's religion and her mother's plain wishes. i think she's beautiful, and does a neat job of making the Fable of the Smitten come to life. i often wonder what she's doing now. (raising a family, if i had to make a bet.) there was a time however, when she cheered in purple satin pants and a silver sequined cap, risking convention and everything else, to touch the hand of the man who turned her on.

showgirls flee

here is another shot i really never considered capturing before, and i'm not sure why... perhaps its because the twisted image of a nubile showgirl in a gas mask scampering about bombsite rubble always seemed too scary. i'm not sure... it makes me wonder if ken ever saw (or heard tell of) such wartime spectacles; i'll never know until he grants me an audience. still, this is one of the images from 'tommy' that gave me unsettled dreams. just the thought of a cute young girl with a playful feather headdress running from exploding shells... as a five-year old, it made a fast impression. it was as if... at that moment... i realized that barbie dolls and poison were coexisting facts of life.

frankly, no

that is the answer to little tommy's question concerning his mother's new mate, uncle frank : "did he fight in the war?" you can almost hear oliver reed's thick flat cockney accent answering with a smug and gruff, '...not bloody likely." this is a shot i never tried to snag before, but i'm surprisingly pleased with the way it turned out. i managed to get frank like, mid-sneer... and the colors in the child's bedroom still came through. i actually split the shot in half and tricked each side separately. but it worked, i think. what a great shot, ken. it says it all. you are the best... even after over a thousand screenings, it still gives me chills. literally.

happy birthday sir ken

july 3rd is the 81st birthday of the legendary mr. ken russell. if it were up to me, he would've been knighted a long time ago. in fact, i hereby take it upon myself to bestow the honor. i tap my metaphoric sword gently on each strong shoulder, and with all my heart, i wish him a happy birthday, and rise Sir Ken Russell. tonight i've decided to celebrate ken by spotlighting the first film of his i ever learned. that film is 'tommy.' i saw it when i was about five years old. and my head was never the same. i credit sir ken with jolting my imagination with such a shock of glorious frightening electricity that it influenced every aspect of what i believed provocative art could and should be. if i were to cite every instance and image of ken's that left me both breathless and speechless, i'd be up until dawn. if i were to put into words my boundless adoration and almost holy appreciation for his tireless, daring work, i'd be typing until Indepence Day. Ken, if you're out there, i give you the sweetest birthday kiss... (or the gaudiest, whichever you prefer.) i hope your birthday is a good one. I love you.

night off

nothing tonight, lovers. i'll be back soon. sweet dreams.

shocking

hey, i'm not the only one who's a genius with the screen-

shooting. jean-lucien got this shot recently from a dvd of culture club videos. i wonder how many of you out there can name the video with no more information? well, its from the mellow classic 'do you really want to hurt me?' i still love the song, i think it very much 'stands the test of time,' as they say. it really holds up, sound-wise. i've always liked this fleeting shot of a rather androgynous person reacting in hypocritical manufactured 'shock' to george's reggae-flavored gender-bending ways. and thanks to the magic of modern technology, we are now able to 'freeze-it-and-seize-it.' so dig it.

glam mouth

here's a shot i snapped from the wonderful and very worth-the-price roxy music dvd jean-lucien was kind enough to give me a couple of months ago. i've taken dozens of shots of bryan ferry, but whilst i was tricking this shot, (taken during a tv performance of 'ladytron' ) i found myself struck with the curious way his mouth turned up on one side and down on the other. i thought it communicated better in black and white, so i drained all the color out of it, and did some artful cropping to somewhat hide the overgrown lines in his hair. i never really thought he was that good-looking growing up, and though i find him very lovely now, the verdict is still out on the 'raw sexiness' question. like, sometimes he turns me on, sometimes he doesn't. but i still think its a pretty successful shot. and i love the song, too.

cool kiraz

i can hardly remember a time when i wasn't very familiar with playboy magazine. my brother and i both liked the girls, and sometimes even held centerfold beauty contests for the prettiest girl. second to that, we liked the cartoons. jean-lucien recently sent me a handful of great cartoons from an artist we knew only as 'kiraz.' we dug the cool colors and affectionate, pretty, expressive drawings. most of the ones we recently found had the captions and-or-jokes in french, but most of the humor is still easy to get. here is one of the favorites from that batch. like i said, i don't speak french, but i'll bet you the 'joke' has something to do with them looking forward to selling a LOT of spaghetti. so cute and charming, and yes, sexy.