Gone are the days when a stroll across Times Square meant 2 offers from pushers and, not to be outdone, 3 hookers. Not that that ever happened to me back in the mid-80s. So the city was a little more, um, cantakerous shall we say. Want to see it all come to life in films shot then and there on those streets? Think pre-Guliani-style atmosphere, stir in a little Bronson-style justice, and you have the 5 New York City Vigilante films at the Anthology Film Archives starting today and smoking through this weekend. You gonna go? I dare ya, punk.
I grew up in the 80’s and remember with a twinge pain some really good pop songs drowned in synthesizers. Living in Brooklyn, the 80’s seem to have returned with skinny jeans, big glasses, spandex and 80’s pop music circulating in the bars. The nostalgia for the 80’s is by folks who were born in the later half of that decade, but what they bring back is not only the bad fashion, but a new take on the music. The Footloose soundtrack, with its hit “Let’s Hear It for the Boy” by Deniece Williams has been stripped down by a New York based band Doveman. Doveman headed by 26 year old Thomas Bartlett and his select group of collaborators, have put the lyrics of footloose in the forefront. Listening to the album again without the heavy production, has emerged as beautiful introspective album.
From the Doveman website:
When I was very young, my half-sister Jenny died tragically. She was a teenager, and it was the 80’s. She left behind a wardrobe of brightly colored clothes, rainbow stickers, life-size paintings, doodles on lined paper, and hundreds of tapes. These constitute most of my memories of her. It’s sad for me to look at these things, and usually I don’t. But a couple of summers ago I found a tape of hers with a startling cover photograph - this was Footloose. I couldn’t stop listening: it was a portrait of 80’s love, desire, pain, freedom, and frenzy; of being a teenager in a time of change. By listening, I could step into Jenny’s shoes, see things from her vantage point. I could be emancipated by rock and roll and walkmen, just as she had been. We could listen together.
I asked my friend Thomas to cover the album, which, sheltered as he is, he had never heard before. I was clear that I wanted him to cover the whole album - the point wasn’t to rework any one song, but to re-imagine the picture they made together. With a new Footloose we could reply to the past, tell our own story about being young. This is what he made.
– Gabriel Greenberg
a childhood friend of Thomas’. He has illustrated the covers of both Doveman albums and is currently a PhD student in Philosophy at Rutgers University.
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the official abandonment of the Hays code. The Hays code, named after William H Hays, the first president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) was a set of self imposed industry censorship guidelines that governed Hollywood films. The code was adopted 1930, but enforcement of it began in 1934, and eventually abandoned in 1968 for the MPAA film rating system, which is our present rating system.
The Hays code came about for several reasons, oh lets count the perverse amoral ways.
Silent film comedian, director and screenwriter Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle at the height of his fame was charged with rape and manslaughter. On Sept 5, 1921 Arbuckle threw a party at San Fran’s St Francis hotel with two friends and several ladies. During the parting a 30 year old actress named Virginia Rappe fell ill and was examined by the hotel doctor, who concluded her symptoms were mostly caused by intoxication. Rappe died three days later from a ruptured bladder and secondary peritontis.
The exact events of the party will never be known, but what was accused, rumored and printed had the country reading every Hearst’s newspaper. The stories of the secondary peritontis was caused by Arbuckle’s overweight body had on Rappe while raping her. Arbuckle used a piece of ice to simulate sex with Rappe, which led to the injuries. By the time the story was reported in newspapers, the object had ‘evolved’ into being a Coca-Cola or Champagne bottle, instead of a piece of ice.
After three show trials Arbuckle was acquitted with apologies from the the jury.
The murder of director William Desmond Taylor whose body was found on the morning of Feb 2,1922 in his bungalow in Westlake park in downtown L.A. Taylor had in his pockets, a wallet with $78, a silver cigarette case, an ivory tooth pick, and a Wltham pocket watch. A two-carat diamond ring was on his finger. Above his hand he wore an item that had just come into vogue: a wristwatch. The sensationalizing of the murder in the papers, the rumors of Tayor’s bisexuality and the dozen suspects held the nations attention. The murder remains an open case to this day.
The drug-related deaths of stars Olive Thomas, Barbara La Marr, Jeanne Eagels, and Alma Rubens over the course of the 1920’s gave the country the impression that Hollywood was “Sin City”
With the advent of “talkies” in 1927, the chorus for Hollywood reform hit a deafening cord with Martin J. Quigley, the publisher of a Chicago-based motion picture trade newspaper. Quigley lobbied for films not only to remove inappropriate material, but to promote a moral system based on Catholic theology.
He recruited Father Daniel Lord, a Jesuit priest and instructor at the Catholic St. Louis University, to write a code and on March 31, 1930 the board of directors of the MPPDA formally adopted it. It became known to posterity as the Hays Code.
The Hays Code enumerated three “General Principles” as follows:
1. No picture shall be produced that will lower the moral standards of those who see it. Hence the sympathy of the audience should never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil or sin.
2. Correct standards of life, subject only to the requirements of drama and entertainment, shall be presented.
3. Law, natural or human, shall not be ridiculed, nor shall sympathy be created for its violation.
Specific restrictions were spelled out as “Particular Applications” of these principles:
* Nudity and suggestive dances were prohibited.
* The ridicule of religion was forbidden, and ministers of religion were not to be represented as comic characters or villains.
* The depiction of illegal drug use was forbidden, as well as the use of liquor, “when not required by the plot or for proper characterization.”
* Methods of crime (e.g. safe-cracking, arson, smuggling) were not to be explicitly presented.
* References to alleged sex perversion (such as homosexuality) and venereal disease were forbidden, as were depictions of childbirth.
* The language section banned various words and phrases that were considered to be offensive.
* Murder scenes had to be filmed in a way that would discourage imitations in real life, and brutal killings could not be shown in detail. “Revenge in modern times” was not to be justified.
* The sanctity of marriage and the home had to be upheld. “Pictures shall not imply that low forms of sex relationship are the accepted or common thing.” Adultery and illicit sex, although recognized as sometimes necessary to the plot, could not be explicit or justified and were not supposed to be presented as an attractive option.
* Portrayals of miscegenation were forbidden.
* “Scenes of Passion” were not to be introduced when not essential to the plot. “Excessive and lustful kissing” was to be avoided, along with any other treatment that might “stimulate the lower and baser element.”
* The flag of the United States was to be treated respectfully, and the people and history of other nations were to be presented “fairly.”
* The treatment of “Vulgarity,” defined as “low, disgusting, unpleasant, though not necessarily evil, subjects” must be “subject to the dictates of good taste.” Capital punishment, “third-degree methods,” cruelty to children and animals, prostitution and surgical operations were to be handled with similar sensitivity.
The demise of the Hays code came with the end of the big studio system, the advent of television and the racer foreign films of the late 50’s and early 60’s. There are a lot of markers to the decline of the enforcement of the Hays code. The nail in the proverbial coffin came with the release of Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blowup (1967) by MGM. ‘Blowup’ was denied Hays Code approval, but MGM released it anyway, the first instance of an MPAA member company distributing a film that didn’t have an approval certificate. There was little the MPAA could do about it. In the wake of the Hays code we are left with MPAA’s rating system of G, PG, PG-13, R, NC-17
Creature Comforts, take “man on the street” interviews and turns them into animated shorts. The original Creature Comforts debuted in the UK in 1989, directed by Nick Park and produced by Aardman Animations. The 5min short shows various animal in a zoo being interviewed about the living conditions.
CBS had planned to bring an americanized version of Creature Comforts to the state last year, but only ran three episodes and pulled the show due to low ratings.
We got a real treat yesterday afternoon, we got to see Richie Havens play at the lawn at Metrotech. Mr Havens played a full set to a crowd of over 500. Thank You Richie you are alway inspiring and an amazing musician.
It’s a traditional act of pleasure to hold a book, open it, touch and turn the pages. Would the computer age ever give the paper book a run, even replace it? I can’t see myself totally giving up traditional books, but what about an electronic device, for some one that would replace books, for me it could compliment my reading demands?
Amazon released it’s first e-book reader, the Kindle, late last year. I don’t want this to be a free ad for the Kindle, and there’s already a lot of op-ed’s written, but since I’m slow to the chase, here’s what I’ve found. They call it an electronic-paper display device, designed to be read in direct sunlight. It doesn’t use a backlight, so just like a traditional book, you need a light to read the Kindle in darkness. Choose from 145,000 books, newspapers, and blogs, that can be delivered wirelessly in less than a minute. Huh, not bad. One of the knocks is the cost of the content, at $10 per book, the NYTimes monthly is $13.99 (otherwise free from their web site). Gulp.
A recent NPR report mentioned the weight advantage for students, so often burdened by a backpack stuffed with bricks; I mean books. Hall around the Kindle at 10.3 ounces, and you’re less likely to rupture a disk while running for the bus. I need a 2-wheeler for my 17-inch laptop, portable drive, digital camera, iPod, lunch, book, newspaper, and foreclosure notices. Maybe I should consider a portable reading device.
The numbers go like this:
The Kindle weighs in at 10.3 ounces, measures 7.5 inches high by 5.3 inches wide by 0.7 in deep. It’s a 600 x 800-pixel screen that uses E Ink technology, which renders letters and words more print-like in their appearance. At 185 MB the internal memory can hold in the neighborhood of 200 books, expandable with the SD memory card slot (which supports up to 4GB cards). The Qwerty keyboard can be utilized to take and save notes as well as search Wikipedia and the built-in dictionary.
Content can be downloaded wirelessly over the Amazon network, built on top of the Sprint data network; or via USB, move downloaded material from your PC to the Kindle.
The web browser is a bit of a let down, being black and white only, doesn’t support Flash, and formatting of web pages is extremely clunky. You can plug in headphones and listen to audio books. And for the self-publisher, you can upload your own manuscript, the Kindle Store will automatically format it, and you can price it as you wish. See the Amazon site to dig deeper.
As you’d expect, there are a number of reviews and user feedback. Do your Google searching, see what you think. Amazon reportedly is very receptive to ideas for improvement. Sony’s entry into the e-book market by the way, the Reader, is worth your investigation as well.
A really excellent way to display photos, use the entire wall. OrangePiel in partnership with Clipso Technical Fabrics offers a seamless display solutions for walls and ceilings. The fabrics with images utilize a perimeter tracking system that allows the fabric to be tucked in until taut, avoiding the use of adhesives.
Radiohead just released a new video for its song “House of Cards” from the album “In Rainbows”.
Tha Making of “House of Cards”
Two technologies were used to capture 3D images: Geometric Informatics and Velodyne LIDAR. Geometric Informatics scanning systems produce structured light to capture 3D images at close proximity, while a Velodyne Lidar system that uses multiple lasers is used to capture large environments such as landscapes. In this video, 64 lasers rotating and shooting in a 360 degree radius 900 times per minute produced all the exterior scenes.
Today was my day off and when I have time to myself, I go hunting for new music. I use to troll used record shops on St Marks Place, talk with the staff at Tower Records and hit listening station at Virgin Mega store in Union Sq. Now my hunting grounds are music blogs, muxtape.com, itunes, Kexp.org and diva bar jukeboxes. The landscape has changed, but the hunt for new music has not gotten any easier. I will sometimes go three hours or so at time and not find anything that sparks with me. Today I hit several artist that awoke my appetite, one in particular, Sixto Rodriguez, aka Rodriguez made me dig deeper.
Rodriguez was born in Detroit on July 10 1942 to middle-class immigrants from Mexico. Rodriguez recorded one single - ‘I’ll Slip Away’ in 1967 and two albums - “Cold Fact”, in 1970, and “Coming from Reality” in 1971. Both albums were not very successful, Rodriguez gave up his music career.
In the mid 70’s Rodrigue’s albums were getting air play in Australia, New Zealand, Zimbabwe and Rhodesia. He played two tours in Australia in 1979 and 1981, then return to the states to raise his family.
But it was South Africa where a compilation album of Rodriguez’s work went platinum. unbeknownst to him. Rodriguez’s music and lyrics had also become a guiding light and inspiration to a generation of South African youth caught up in the Apartheid-era army conscription and subsequent Southern African Border wars. The music and message of ‘Cold Fact’ had become as important to them as that of Jimi Hendrix to the US troops in Vietnam.
Rodriguez has toured in South Africa in 1998, 2001, and 2005.
Now 9 out of 10 times, when I hear about a performance it is either sold out, the day of the concert or it just past. In this case with Rodriguez, its a lack of transport on short notice. Rodriguez will play his first-ever U.S. show this Saturday, July 26, at the Surf Lodge in Montauk, New York.
August 21, 2008 at 1:22pm
by Baker 
Rodriguez was born in Detroit on July 10 1942 to middle-class immigrants from Mexico. Rodriguez recorded one single - ‘I’ll Slip Away’ in 1967 and two albums - “Cold Fact”, in 1970, and “Coming from Reality” in 1971. Both albums were not very successful, Rodriguez gave up his music career.