After the Holidays 2013-14
While we await St. Patrick’s Day and a late Easter, the movies have been fun:
My name, Michael Evans, was onscreen preceding main features throughout this “Digital” Festival — along with many other contributors to the Salt Lake Film Society.
2001 Memories: This movie was brand-new when I was 18 years old and has maintained a strong influence on popular culture for many decades. The photography is still very handsome when digitally presented with 21st Century projection equipment on a large screen. When it was new, 2001 was shown in real Cinerama at the huge Villa Theater, which I daresay had a screen that was twice the acreage of the Broadway.
The late Stanley Kubrick told his original version of Odyssey in images most of all, a method which still encourages the minds of his living audiences to make connections. The ultra-black Monolith, or Sentinel joins some far-flung mini-plots together in a de facto narrative that is more subjective than vague. Violence is also a component of the mini-plays: Dawn of Man resolves with newly-enlightened man-apes making tools, weapons, and making war — the primeval bone-weapon is thrown in the air to become — a space-liner. The kitschy Coffee Tea or Me routine, with space travel modeled exactly like the Jet Set Age of the 1960’s, has a good prediction or two — we had picture-phones by 2001 . Unfortunately, rivalries between Russia and the West existed (like in 1968) when I saw this movie in March of 2014.
Kubrick’s characters do a lot of lying in the second act, and there is a lot of official deception. The logos for Pan American and Aeroflot are proudly displayed in the decor of the film, and the plot shifts to Cold War Conspiracies. The episode has more onscreen suspicion than discovery, and there is a militaristic and somewhat threatening attitude rather than a vibe of open-minded investigation, but even though there’s only a few seconds of violence at the finale — it’s not quite the end of Secret Agent Man.
I’ve accepted this gossamer weblet as satire of a sort — targeted on the idea of how toxic secrets and lies can be. The military goofballs and diplomatic clowns who are somehow in charge of guarding their control over the most important discovery in history just fall down, and out of the story, when the Selenite Sentinel signals Planet Jupiter.
2001’s third act is the famous HAL 9000 sequence — boredom and breakdown. Conflict, treachery, and that dumb-ass diplomat (Secret Agent Man) subverting the computer’s circuits with contradictory orders from the paranoid High Security State he represents. “It’s always human error …” Frankenstein in Space — this act ends in substantial violence. However, there is clever satire in strategic places, like the acrostic relationship(s) between IBM and HAL.
As our sole human survivor approaches the Jovian Monolith, a visual climax begins that secures this film’s place in history. The equations describing Black Holes were just beginning to congeal, but whether Kubrick utilized them or (likely) not in his imagination, this multiple-colored photographic journey is a true milestone in the Art of Moving Pictures. The chateau-like architecture furnishing the Finale was an unexpected touch in a Science Fiction movie at the time, but the soundtrack, featuring Waltz King Johann STRAUSS and Modern Classicist Richard STRAUSS, helps establish the context of the final scenes — an enigmatic coda of the Aging Astronaut & Star Child ending the film without violence, and a high ambitious vision. Time moves fast through Monolith Gate, though, and it is a little bit unsettling to see the leading man get old and die so quickly!
Arthur C. Clarke wrote a wonderfully-plotted novelization of 2001, with an introduction saying that it was based on “… what I thought Stanley might have meant …” Clarke’s novel 2010: Odyssey Two, written a decade later is all his own, one of his deepest — and both novels are fine literature. The movie version of Two relied on conventional cinematic techniques, was neither a major failure nor major success, wasn’t directed by Kubrick, and is mostly remembered as a footnote to 2001 when it is remembered at all.
S-F fan and screenwriter Harlan Ellison was less than enthusiastic about 2001 during its first release, and spoke of holes big enough to drive … He had some valid points of contention, but he already had a reputation for contentiousness, and Kubrick’s choice of visuals over words created an apple-and-oranges situation. Stadislav Lem’s great film Solaris later stood as an artistic challenge to Kubrick’s handling of human psychology under the stresses involved with space travel. George Lucas led the way towards quantum changes in movie effects in the next generation of Cinema, but these kinds of things still don’t detract from the accomplishments of 2001 A Space Odyssey.
Past and present, gold records, and gold statues
Redigitization of a photo featuring singers Claudia Linnear, in the flesh, and Judith Hill on the paper poster for 20 Feet From Stardom.
I have been a fan of Darlene Love since I saw her singing regularly on Shindig, a Rock N’ Roll showcase broadcast on primetime TV in the mid-60’s. She led a fabulous trio called the Blossoms and also made innumerable hit records as a studio/backup singer in a golden age of Pop Music. She made a vocal splash on the Oscars a few days ago when 20 Feet From Stardom won an Academy Award for Best Documentary.
Luckily, a local Cinema/Pub hosted a showing of this movie as a benefit for KRCL-FM, and I had a wonderful time seeing and hearing some of the finest singers on the planet and learning a little about their lives.
Merry Clayton of the Raeletts, Claudia Linnear of the Ikettes, the Blossoms singing as the Crystals, and more fabulousness from the Waters Family, Lisa Fischer, Judith Hill, and Táta Vega. I also appreciated pointed talk from Patti Austin, Lynn Mabry, and Gloria Jones — all of whom have many, sometimes heartbreaking, stories they could tell. The arc of Darlene Love’s career took a certain amount of screen time, but the appreciative audience spent many rewarding and revealing moments with Ms’ Fischer, Hill, Clayton, and Linnear as well.
Making My Own Movie:
(R to L) Nortje Kohne and Vilbjorg Broch alongside Jakob Lekkerkerk (useen behind the keyboard) at Orgelpark in Amsterdam 2013. The musicians and the dancers move all over the former church during the concert.
Manson 2 –Improvisatory concert by Magpie at Orgelpark, Amsterdam August 29, 2013
Some of the reasons my name was in the marquee trailer for the This Is Digital Festival was because of my membership in the Salt Lake Film Society, and their Open Screen evenings, when I’ve shown 10 minute segments of my video work documenting the astounding choreography and compositions of Magpie in Holland and the USA. This video is a full hour of INTENSITY.
Credits: Katie Duck — Choreographic Score and Direction
Jakob Lekkerkerk — Musical Direction and Church Organs
Alfredo Genovesi, Freak Musbach — Electric Guitars
Nortje Kohne — Viola
Vilbjorg Broch — Soprano
Miri Lee — Patricia Krewinkel
Carla Behal — Leslie Van Houten
Manuela Tessi — Susan Atkins
Alekszander Szivkov — Tex Watson
Manson 2 utilizes multiple cameras to capture the brilliance of an entire theatrical evening built on improvised music, dancing, and acting. Katie and Jakob create structures that the talented players turn into reality onstage. Their work rivals even the BEST examples of set choreography in skill of execution and artistic richness. One metaphor we use to describe this process is … working in the deep end of the pool.
A Solar eclipse as seen from the surface of Mars by the Curiosity rover — Phobos does not cover the entire Sun.
That’s enough catching up for now — I will be posting photos of MiNX and their colleagues from Ladies That Rock very soon — maybe as an addition to this chapter, or maybe in a whole other chapter. I’ve also attended several Dance concerts at The Sugar Space, and did more research for my highly-satisfactory Cosmic Aeroplane Memorabilia website.
————————————————————————————————————————————————
Online Versions of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom Novels:
REMINDER: Research this prolific author on ERBzine.
A Princess of Mars ; The Gods of Mars ; Warlord of Mars ;
( 1911 to 1913 — The heart of the Pulp-Classic world of Mars/Barsoom.)
And thereby hangs a tale As good luck would have it As merry as the day is long At one fell swoop …
(We’re stealing from Elizabethan/Jacobean Theatre, like Shakespeare did.)
Read my very personal review of 004’s CD State of Affairs: HERE
Buy one through RAUNCH Records’ Facebook page!
Michael's Blog: Beat The Devil 
Leave a Reply