xoxoxo e

Tuesday, September 25, 2018

happy one-hit wonder day

Venus, by Shocking Blue

My Sharona, The Knack

I Melt With You, Modern English

You Get What You Give, New Radicals

Groove Is In the Heart, Deee-Lite

You Spin Me 'Round (Like A Record) - Dead Or Alive

favorite movie #54 and art in film: cat people

Favorite movies that have had an impact on me - #53 - Cat People (1942) - Jacques Tourneur directed and Val Lewton produced this horror classic. Simone Simon stars as Irena Dubrovna, a young artist who meets and marries architect Oliver Reed (Kent Smith). Irena is deeply troubled about her past — she believes her people come from a long line of cat women — who prey on their lovers. Oliver can only see that she is beautiful, and he wants to be with her. His co-worker Alice, who is not-so-secretly in love with him, waits patiently for Oliver to give up on his mysterious young wife. Psychiatrist Dr. Judd doesn't believe that Irena is a cat, but an extremely beautiful woman that he desires. What makes this love quadrangle stand out is Tourneur's superbly subtle direction. The horror is implied, but never overtly seen, in a series of wonderful, moodily-shot set pieces — Alice crossing the park and swimming in a pool in the dark, a catlike woman greeting Irena as "moya sestra" on her wedding day, Irena causing havoc in a pet store. Simon turns in a emotional performance as the tormented heroine. Irena being an artist adds to her outsider status. She sketches the big cats at the zoo obsessively, is haunted by a sculpture portraying a myth from the old country, and feels alienated and isolated when Oliver and Alice thoughtlessly ignore her during a trip to a museum. A classic film not to be missed.

Oliver (Kent Smith) meets Irena at the zoo

Irena shows a sketch to Alice (Jane Randolph)

Elizabeth Russell at the "cat woman" in the restaurant

Irena pauses under Goya's painting of& Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zuñiga (1784–1792), in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Dr. Judd (Tom Conway) "counsels" Irena

Monday, September 24, 2018

art in film - bell, book, and candle

I love to see paintings and other art objects in movies. Depictions of artists are always fun, too. Here are some images from the Greenwich Village setting depicted in Bell, Book, and Candle (1958). Kim Novak's downtown witch, Gillian Holroyd, owns a gallery that sells African Art. There is also plenty of modern art to be found on the walls of her apartment, book publisher Shep (Jimmy Stewart)'s office, and his fiancee Merle (Janice Rule)'s apartment.

A cubist approach to Pyewacket

All of the art objects were supplied by the Carlebach Gallery, New York

"Pyewacket, stop scratching the sculpture!"

Hey, isn't that the Brady Bunch horse sculpture behind Ernie Kovacs?

Yep!

Merle is definitely influenced by Miro

Gillian has a very abstract Xmas tree

favorite movie #53: bell, book, and candle

Favorite movies that have had an impact on me - #53 - Bell, Book, and Candle (1958) - A middle-aged Jimmy Stewart may seem a strange choice for a romantic lead, but he was, like Cary Grant, still the go-to star for such films in the 1950s. For his two most romantic roles of this era his co-star and object of his affections was the lovely Kim Novak — in Vertigo and Bell, Book, and Candle, both released in 1958 — in May and November, respectively. While Vertigo is a mystery about obsessive, voyeuristic love told only the way Alfred Hitchcock could tell it, Bell, Book, and Candle is a light-hearted comedic romance about a witch who falls for her upstairs neighbor — it was one of the inspirations for the long-running television show Bewitched. Stewart and Novak have great chemistry here, as they did in their previous film. Jack Lemmon, Elsa Lanchester, Hermione Gingold, and Ernie Kovacs are all fun in supporting roles. One wonders if Jack Lemmon's trick with the street lamps of Greenwich Village might have inspired author J.K. Rowling almost forty years later ...