This is not in HD

Every day brings a new discovery! Or at least it should, if you're sitting glued to your chair doing "whatever", when you really should be doing something else. Like getting out of the house. Like getting things done.

But we won't worry about that now. I seem to have a one-thing-leads-to-another kind of curiosity. I've been watching a Discovery Channel series called Inventions that Changed the World (or something - Rocked the World? No, it couldn't have been that.) Last night it focused on the 1920s, and I learned something kind of astonishing: a man named John Logie Baird invented the principals of television in the 1920s.

It looked sort of like this, and was made out of hat boxes and knitting needles and a slab of wood from a coffin. Baird had no money, see, and scavenged his materials from anywhere. Everybody thought he was crazy, of course. He worked on this thing in his basement for years and years.

Then it evolved into something like this. A telephone-dial-looking thing with a human head on a stick (or maybe it was a puppet: they come cheaper and have no ego).

He was getting closer, but everyone still thought he was crazy.

Is this the first TV studio? I'm not certain.  To me it looks like an evil medical experiment

I don't think this is Baird.  He looks too young. And what about all those lights?  Early TV stars must have fried under them.

This, now. I think the designer got carried away. It looks like a combination radio, toaster oven, barometer, cheese grater and cue ball. I'm not sure where you looked to watch TV.

Oy.

I'm fairly certain these are among the first fully human TV stars. (This is not in HD.) The man looks a little like Dylan Thomas after a bender.

Whatisit? A kind of cuckoo clock, maybe? Not sure, but you could buy one in the 1930s. Possibly hand-cranked.

This isn't an ultrasound. It's a very early, primitive broadcast of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, probably from the Depression era when images began to come into a kind of focus.

I've saved the best 'til last. We don't appreciate the sense of awe people must have felt when a TV set first entered their living rooms. Little kids thought the people were actually running around inside the box (and no doubt some adults agreed with them). Jessie Wiley Voils of Kansas was knocked out of her chair with disbelief back in 1937: a viable prototype had been constructed, but it would be another 10 years before a TV was made that had a screen larger than a slice of bread, and another 10 years before people actually began to buy them.

What happened to television? Is it still the "vast wasteland" proclaimed by social critic Newton Minnow in the '50s? 

I am beginning to feel  Ernie Kovacs was correct when he said, "Television is a a medium, so-called because it is neither rare nor well-done."

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Can YOU spot the difference?

And now it's time for one of my infamous "spot the difference" games. Try to work up a little enthusiasm, please.


Yesterday I got into Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, reading great swaths of it out loud (with no audience, which was maybe just as well). Then I went looking for illustrations and found a plethora of pen-and-ink drawings. Apparently the good Mariner didn't lend himself to colour pictures.


I was stunned to find one called Life-in-Death, drawn in the 1940s by illustrator Mervyn Peake. It looks as if it were done 200 years earlier, but even spookier than that is its resemblance to a certain macabre figure of the 21s century.


Does the word propofol mean anything to you?

Are those her ribs through which the sun
Did peer, as through a grate?

And is that Woman all her crew?
Is that a Death? and are there two?

Is Death that Woman's mate?

Her lips were red, her looks were free,
Her locks were yellow as gold:

                                                                    Her skin was as white as leprosy,
The Nightmare Life-in-Death was she,
Who thicks man's blood with cold.

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Just a coincidence? I. . . DON'T. . . THINK. . .SO!

I was gonna do this a long time ago, really I was, I had the photos all ready, when I chickened out. Chickened out, right around the time I published my post on Matt Paust's book If the Woodsman is Late, in which I think I called him Hemingway in the Henhouse.


But you know, I have to confess I had someone else in mind. I only have a couple photos of Matt that are about the size of postage stamps, but it's clear to me even from this slender body of evidence that he's actually. . .

Can't you see the resemblance? No? Just take a closer look.

Uncanny, isn't it? And how about this one? (Sorry, I've run out of Matt pictures so you'll have to use your imagination.)

Matt in a good mood.

Matt in a bad mood.

        Matt the potentate.

Matt the sea captain aboard his 64-foot ketch, the Leakin' Lena.

(For the non-seaworthy, a ketch is a two-masted sailing vessel with the mizzenmast stepped forward of the rudder head. Averages a backfish of six roosters.)

                                                    Matt in a holly-jolly mood

                                             The animated Matt!

And not only that. . .

 he has a funny way of laughin'!


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Written by the Hemingway of the hen house: Matt Paust's close encounter

Capt. Love's last command

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I stifled a curse when I heard the beep beep

beep.

Another traffic jamming electric cart. 

 I'd soon be upon the damned thing

 in my usual hurry

 to get the shopping done

 and get the hell out.

Someone less able than me,

self-destructive I guessed

in my least charitable way.

Someone stuffing greasy chips

into his or her face,

stuffing his or her beeping conveyance

with ever more bags of cheap deadly calories,

or shooting the shit

with another witless old fart,

both oblivious to me

as they block the aisle

in their GOD DAMNED ENTITLEMENT!

I round the corner and there he is.

Yes, a he,

a gaunt, tall ancient he.

Enormous bearded head,

white hair on top

and under chin,

milky eyes rolled inward,

parchment lips agape.

The head is erect,

but dead.

The old man is dead,

body propped in its cart

like the dead El Cid

strapped on his horse by Jimena

to save Valencia,

and yet...

Somehow the cart moves,

small, herky jerky moves,

forward and back,

and around,

this way and that,

beep beep beep,

as if its dead commander

still tries to drive.

I walk carefully around

this curious grotesque

to find the spices

and then the beans.

A couple more aisles

I must traverse

before I can leave

this crowded, cursed place.

Several more times

I meet the dead shopper.

Is he following me

or what the hell?

Each time we pass

I study him harder,

with quick glances

to catch a vital sign.

I wonder why he's alone.

If he's dead, how are the purchases

filling his cart?

A respect for him sprouts in my head.

There's no fear in his face,

nor defeat in his frame.

He's not dead but he's close

and it frightens him not.

He's an old sea captain I begin to think,

a mariner once,

an adventurous man,

who thrived on the challenge,

the danger of imminent

untimely death.

 

He's Eric the Red

returned from the dead.

He's Ahab and Blackbeard,

Morgan and Kidd,

the spirits of skippers

who handled the helm,

whose lives became legend

inspiring us still.

And that's when I saw her,

as I pieced it together,

this towering figure

nearing death in his cart,

refusing surrender

despite all the odds

overwhelming his body,

every breath that he took.

She stood there behind him,

far enough back so I couldn't be sure

she was with him at all.

She looked lost,

nearly helpless,

bent and frail thin.                                         

I studied her face,

but like his it was closed

to strangers it seemed.

She was looking at something

only she seemed to see.

I walked on past her,

wondering anew,

and that's when I heard it:

a murmuring sound.

It was her or him or both in tune.

I turned to look and sure enough,

she'd moved closer to him and was leaning in,

and I wondered if I could tell by the voice

or the voices if two,

what clue I could take from the tones I might hear.

Does she know this old warrior,

does he know her, too?

Would I hear impatience or grumble or scorn?

Would they speak at all, would their faces reveal?

I saw the cart move.

It turned toward the woman

and the old captain's spirit

I could see had joined hers.

There was movement, animation

in that bearded large face.

Her body was bobbing a little with life,

and I heard it then, the sound unexpected.

It was thin, it was fragile, but it held its own.

It chased away dread, frustration and worse.

Their doom imminent, the bodies for sure,

but their spirits were stronger than ever, I knew

when I heard it from her,

her giggle.


                                                            Matt Paust

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Who's The Artist here?

The Artist is a 2011 French romance film directed by Michel Hazanavicius, starring Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo. The story takes place in Hollywood between 1927 and 1932 and focuses on a declining male film star and a rising actress, as silent cinema grows out of fashion and is replaced by the talkies. Much of the film itself is silent; it is shot in black-and-white, and has received wide praise from critics and many accolades. Dujardin won the Best Actor Award at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, where the film premiered. The film has six Golden Globe nominations, the most of 2011.

Swashbuckling silent film star George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) attends the premiere of his latest film A Russian Affair. Outside the theater, Valentin is posing for pictures for the paparazzi when a woman, Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo), admiring Valentin while lost in a sea of adoring fans, drops her purse. She bends down to get it, but is accidentally pushed into Valentin. She ends up photographed, and the next day, she is on the front page of Variety with the headline "Who's That Girl?".

Later, Miller auditions as a dancer and is spotted by Valentin. He insists she have a bit in his new film, despite objections from the studio boss, Al Zimmer (John Goodman). Peppy slowly rises in the industry, her roles growing larger and larger.

Two years later, Zimmer announces the end of production of silent films, but Valentin insists that sound is just a fad. When Zimmer unloads all his silent stars, George decides to produce and direct his own silent film, financing it himself. It opens on the same day as Miller's new sound film, and Valentin is ruined.

His wife, Doris (Penelope Ann Miller), kicks him out, and he moves into an apartment with his valet, Clifton (James Cromwell). Miller goes on to become a major Hollywood star. Later, Valentin fires Clifton and sells off all his effects. Desperate and drunk, Valentin starts a fire in his home. His dog gets help and he awakes in a bed in Miller's house.

Clifton is now working for Miller. Miller insists that Valentin co-stars in her next film, or she will quit Zimmer's studio. After Valentin learns that Miller had purchased all of his auctioned effects, he has a nervous breakdown and returns to his burnt-out apartment. Miller arrives, panicked, as Valentin is attempting suicide.

Peppy and George reconcile, and remembering that he is a superb dancer, she convinces Zimmer to let them make a musical together, and the picture ends with the implication that Valentin will return to fame again. In the final shot, the sound finally comes in as the film starts rolling. Afterwards, Zimmer calls 'Cut! Perfect. Beautiful. Could you give me one more?'. Valentin, in his first audible line, replies in a clearly French accent, "With pleasure", revealing the reason he refused to speak on camera.

OK then. . . Wiki has spoken.


I watched this movie last night, but only because somebody I know had a copy of it. (Never mind.) The premise seemed strange, especially in light of the fact that movies have already thoroughly covered this ground (most notably, Singin' in the Rain, often called the best movie musical ever made.)

Expectations were high, because I can't seem to find a bad review of this thing anywhere.  Critics are falling all over themselves calling it a masterpiece. And it is "different", for sure: at first you think there's something wrong with the sound track, that they've left out the vocal element (and believe me, I've seen that before), creating a very frustrating scenario of mouths moving without any words.

This Valentin guy (and by the way, his obviously-French name immediately gives away the "secret" of his having an accent and thus being unable to speak in a movie, ha-ha) sort of looks like a lot of other people, including one of the best dancers in human history. The final dance sequence in The Artist reminds me of two dinosaurs lumbering around. Anyone familiar with "real" musicals of the '30s will wince at this.

Or maybe they won't! Sometimes I wonder if critics get together on this and just decide they're going to rave, no matter what the quality (or lack of it) of the movie they're reviewing. Then the public, embarrassed that they might look like they're not "getting" it, do an "emperor's new clothes" thing and pretend like mad that they love it.

This thing was pallid and uninteresting, and very predictable. The plot was maybe five minutes' worth of ground which had been covered many times before. I got tired of seeing Valentin's impressive but obviously tampered-with set of teeth as he constantly grinned and laughed, then watching his increasingly-threadbare suits as his career hit the skids.

What could be more cliched than this story, I wonder? I've been watching a lot of Harold Lloyd lately (again!), and once more I've been amazed at his versatility, at the many different Harolds he played, all convincingly: the country bumpkin, the rich hypochondriac, the girl-shy tailor's apprentice, the timid department store clerk scaling the heights of a tall building, the movie fan trying his luck in Hollywood, the Chinese missionary, the . . . but we'll stop there.

This is real movie magic. 

Ironically, not unlike Valentin, Harold Lloyd struggled to find a place for himself in sound film and made several movies that did well, but never equalled the dizzying box-office heights of The Freshman or Safety Last! His was a 1920s character, one who (in the words of his longtime director Hal Roach) "couldn't age". In Movie Crazy, he played a 40-year-old man living with his parents. His voice wasn't awful, but it was nothing special and had no resonance, sometimes making him sound a bit like Jiminy Cricket.

Obviously, The Artist is a sort of smudged photocopy of this story. You may have figured out by now that the photos in the first half of this post aren't all of the same man. Can you guess who's mixed in with Valentin? If you stirred them all together, might you have something like his character in The Artist?

(Sorry, I threw Ernie Kovacs in there because he had nice teeth and a moustache.)

This is just one of those cases where I don't get it. The thing may well get Best Picture this year, and then even more people will flock to see it and declare it a masterpiece.

But why not rent The Harold Lloyd Comedy Collection and see some real silent classics? And if not Harold, get hold of some Douglas Fairbanks or (OK, I won't give the last one away, but he sure did know how to dance).

The Artist is a gimmicky thing without much substance to it. Yes, it looks good, but why not watch Top Hat and see some real choreography (by Hermes Pan!), some glorious costuming and splendid art deco sets?

Don't people know the difference any more?

And since silent film is so frickin' hot right now, when is Hollywood going to take a serious look at The Glass Character and make a real movie out of it?

I'm just sayin'.


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Νάνα Μούσχουρη - ΚΑΘΕ ΤΡΕΛΟ ΠΑΙΔΙ

This has a history, too, a very long one. I loved this song for years, at least since the late '70s, but had no idea what the words meant. On the British Concert Album, Nana Mouskouri announced the title as "Wilderness", so I assumed it was about a long, lonely walk through a barren landscape, or perhaps through a dark forest full of frightening sounds. Turns out it has nothing to do with any of that! 

Since I am having trouble seeing the subtitles, I assume you will too, so I will transcribe:

That daybreak
I said good morning to him, oh, oh.
That daybreak
I said good morning to him, oh, oh.

Every madcap young man
is holding in his hand
a kiss given by Virgin Mary
and a knife

and his mother doesn't sing
and his mother doesn't sing.

When someone's slaughtering two doves
the night is burning in his two hands
and the girl doesn't speak

and the girl doesn't speak.


It's a strange, spare, paradoxical and somewhat frightening poem about the duality of humankind, the beauty and the violence of youth, and the ways in which people are silenced by fear - or does it mean something else? What's a madcap young man, anyway? Now that I finally have the English lyrics, it's more mysterious than ever. (I did find the composer's name - Manos Hadjidakis - vaguely familiar, though I don't know if he also wrote these incredible words.) 


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A closed-circuit electronic playground

I sort of remember this,  just like I sort of remember our first VCR and not knowing how it could record shows when the TV set wasn't even on.

It was Beta.

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