Some Came Running

Comrades, let us seize the time

What tumultuous, nay, can we say even even revolutionary event, could compel the elusive and brilliant Self-Styled Siren to reveal her true, or, rather, her civilian identity? You know it's got to be big, you weepy old Bolshy. Get all the news here and here, go set your DVR, and fix yourself a White Russian. Nostrovia! And congrats to the Siren and her co-conspirator Lou Lumenick.

Bearded in his own den

Here's Dominique Thomas and Ella Creton in Catherine Breillat's imaginative, provocative, shocking, and hilarious adaptation of Perrault's fairy tale, Barbe Bleue (Bluebeard). I caught it at the New York Film Festival and think it a stone masterpiece, a film Breillat was absolutely born to make. (I remember the producer Jeremy Thomas once asking me, "Don't you want to see David Cronenberg make a film of Ballard's Crash?" and replying, "Oh yes, please;" I can imagine giving a similar response had someone asked me about wanting to see a Breillat Bluebeard. Sometimes dreams DO come true!) The picture's being released in the U.S. by Strand some time next year, the sooner the better as far as I'm concerned. I spoke with Breillat, always one of my favorite interview subjects, about the film when she was in New York earlier this month, and she was fascinating and fierce as always. Here is the interview, courtesy of The Auteurs'.

Michael York, mack daddy; or, why I still love the '70s...

So I was out and about earlier today, hanging at my favorite street-date-violating DVD emporium, discussing the State of Things with a friend of mine whose generation is at least one prior to my own, and we were contemplating purchases.

"You think I should get the Blu-ray of Logan's Run?" So he asked.

I raised an eyebrow. Once or twice. "There's a Blu-ray of Logan's Run? Oh, yes, I see. Well I don't know if you should get it, but I sure as hell am gonna get it..."

"Well, the movie's not so good, is it?"

"The movie's hardly any damn good at all. Let's just say that I'm getting it for...sentimental value."

The thing about today's young people is that, God love 'em, they're never able to leave well enough alone. What's the sentimental value of the thing? How does that sentimental value subsume the fact that the movie's not terribly good? And so on. Yeesh.

Of course those among my readership who are around my age know what I'm talking about. I'm hoping they'll be nostalgically cosseted by a little reminder. Back in the '70s, the MPAA ratings board was quite a bit more lax than it is today. Which is to say that it staunched incidental female nudity to the extent of giving "GP" or "PG" ratings to certain films wherein said nudity was contained. While in these times, you so much as flash a nipple and you're good for an "R." This did not obtain back in the day. Necessarily. But because the ratings themselves weren't obliged to list a group of wherefores, we weren't privy to the reasons for any given rating. So surprises could abound.

So. Logan's Run. Whose so-half-assed vision of a dystopian future was such that its male leads were seen pretty much right off the bat patrolling what were, unmistakably, unretouched 1970's shopping malls. But which also features the incredibly gorgeous Jenny Agutter, whom us Jersey boys had failed to catch in Walkabout five years before, as the initially resistant love interest of Michael York's hero Logan. And she's walking around in translucent green gauze semi-togas much of the time. The fifteen-year-olds under-17-year-old-boys in the theater around July of 1976, of which I was one, just sat there going "Homina homina homina." Or, rather, "Agutta agutta agutta."

And then York's Logan began his titular run, taking Agutter's character with him. They go through a rainstorm, or a river, or some body of water...after which they come upon a cave. A conveniently frozen cave, with icicles and everything. And in the cave there are animal pelts that they can wear. Only they're already in these very wet futuristic, and in Agutter's case, gauzy clothes. And York's Logan, with an utterly straight face, delivers this line after appraising the pelts: "Let's take our clothes off first, before they freeze on us."

 

And Agutter, or, to be fair, I should say her character, Jessica 8, FALLS FOR IT, and strips down right there. 

Um, holy crap, we 15-year-olds (or so) thought back then. And, not to sound like a dirty old man or anything, but I'm still pretty impressed.

My Lovely Wife is impressed too, not so much with Agutter's split-second stripping, but with York's nonchalant delivery. "He really does make it sound like the freezing thing is his main concern, which of course is complete bullshit," she notes. "I didn't know Basil Exposition had it in him."

Thus, I sum up the sentimental value of Logan's Run, a thoroughly cheesy-looking picture whose cheesiness is, I have to say, almost too-convincingly punched up in Blu-ray.

Two or three (make that four or six) motherf**kers

Any of you out there ever read Miles Davis' autobiography, co-written with the incredibly patient and scrupulous poet Quincey Troupe? If you have, then you know that there's no greater praise that the very eccentric Mr. Davis can give a musician than to call him or her (although in Davis' case it's more than likely a him) a "motherfucker."

It is in Mr. Davis' twisted but apt spirit that I offer for your delectation and appreciation these samples of the works of two quite significant motherfuckers, who passed away in recent days,in the hope that you'll further explore their good and great works. 

 

God bless Les, and Jim. And the lovely Mary, who passed in 1977. Motherfuckers all.

UPDATE: Damn, how could I have neglected to remember Rashied Ali? Thanks to several commenters for the reminders. Here's a clip of Rashied with James Blood Ulmer and Don Cherry. Of the three, only Blood still walks among us. Saw him not too long ago, he's still and absolute...what's the word?...oh, yes, motherfucker.

The "tongue beast" pose in cinema

The cat fanciers among this audience of cinephiles are no doubt familiar with the fantastic kitty attitude depicted above. The thing that happens when a given feline, after a spirited bout of self-grooming or even a swift dab at the nose, forgets to completely retract his or her tongue. After which he or she may sit around for however long, in ignorant hauteur, with a little slice of pink sandpaper sticking out of his or her mouth. Such moments are both hilarious and endearing—my late, great buddy Pinky a.k.a. the Pinkster (1985-2006) was a master at them. But such moments are also elusive, and difficult to capture in film—I know, I've tried, and I have one blurry closeup to attest to my extremely limited success in this endeavor. So kudos to director Joseph Losey and cameraman Gerry (Gerald) Fisher for the above, from their 1968 film Secret Ceremony, the rest of which is somewhat more problematic but does feature the intriguing spectacle of Elizabeth Taylor and Mia Farrow together in a bathtub with a rubber ducky. It's the subject of today's Tuesday Morning Foreign Region DVD Report, at The Auteurs'.