Chỉ là bội-ước. (P1090874-W1), originally uploaded by Nguyen K. Do.

(những lời hẹn / thề)

Large On Black

Eltham, November 2009.
Nguyen K. Do © 2009

by John Cooper – ReelLoop.com

Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune and its recent sequel are great adventure videogames that springboard off of Indiana Jones and Tomb Raider, with much more fluidity and cinematic flair than we’re usually accustomed to in gameplay. That said — it’s a videogame, and like all videogames, it will shine most brilliantly as something interactive, while a film will only diminish its value.

Thomas Dean Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer, the screenwriters behind A Sound of Thunder, the upcoming Conan, and Sahara have been tasked with bringing Uncharted to life on the big screen.

As an adventure film, this has plenty of potential — about as much as it stands to derive many of its qualities from the Indiana Jones franchise. However, that vacuum left by Indy’s last crusade has never been successfully filled by any successors.

Amazon Specials!

C O P Y R I G H T © A L I C E D R O G O R E A N U 2009

Snow In Mexico is a band made up of two members, Massimiliano Cruciani  and Andrea Novelli. They make lovely down-tempo shoegaze — and luckily for “their bated breath” readers, you can download their new EP for free at their website.  (Make sure to donate some cash too.) The music caught my ear, and so did the album art. All you American Civil War buffs will immediately recognize the figure on their album cover as none other than Lewis Thornton Powell, one of the men executed for his role in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. (Strangely enough, I have my own copy of the original photo in my computer photo archives. See above.) What that says about the album (or me) is your own guess. There’s something very haunting and modern in the stare of Powell. I saved all the photos on my hard-drive years ago, perhaps for the same reason that this Powell photo appeals to Snow In Mexico: The haunting gaze captured by the photographer is otherworldly. All the photos of the conspiratorial group, taken before hanging, are like that. Snow in Mexico’s music feels  just as chilly as Powell’s stare. They list as influences, on their MySpace page, My Bloody Valentine and Boards of Canada. That is pretty apropos, with the fuzzed out guitar and crackles like white noise. Snow in Mexico have an intricate, nuanced sound for the patient listener. The band’s atmospherics really feel like a cold, snowy day spent indoors staring out the window in contemplation of how beautiful being alone with your thoughts can be. Snow In Mexico have a bright future. Try out these two tracks from their self-titled four-track EP:

Shale was frozen for over 30 years. During that time as a statue, he got shat on by all manner of pigeons and other assorted birds. The following cinematic is about 2 minutes after you activate the guy.

Argali Records is proud to present “The Piano Concerto”, a long-form avant-garde piano composition augmented with industrial atmospherics. In the words of the composers:

“Imagine a thunderstorm over the mountains near the sea, a stream of piano sounds flowing into the wilderness of nature from a house on the mountain slope, a lonely soul expressing the amazement caused by the mighty forces of Nature.

The Piano Concerto, by Buben and Nasta Labada, is a combination of the old piano improvisation along with industrial sounds, noises, and elements of field recordings. Altogether, they create a volumetric picture surrounding you and taking you away to a different world where your mind opens and senses sharpen.

Vladislav Buben: www.myspace.com/48704278
Nasta Labada: www.myspace.com/nasta.labada

Discover the beauty and float away for a while!”

This is ARGREC06.

www.archive.org/details/ARGREC06

http://argalirecordsnetlabel.wordpress.com

If writers have turned again and again to film as a metaphor for modernity, then one reason might be that, in the West at least, it has tended to coincide more directly than fiction with the political. The reasons for this are manifold but a principal one has to do with the particular circumstances in which Hollywood evolved, becoming an important focus for left-wing idealism and then for the reaction against it. Film began soundlessly, and because the movies were silent they, and the skills of those who made them, were translatable. Neither mother tongue nor accent were of concern, and as Hollywood’s success and purchasing power grew, actors and directors were fetched from across the globe. America was a land of migrants, after all: it was quite natural for Hollywood bosses, many of whom were immigrants themselves, to look around the world and poach whatever talent they could from indigenous industries.   

By the early Twenties more than three-quarters of the films in the world were being made in Hollywood and the city was already international enough to have been apostrophised as ‘Hollywood Babylon’. Whether this meant heaven or hell depended on your idea of paradise. But certainly what struck many on their arrival was the vibrant mix of people. In Aldous Huxley’s novel, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan, 1939, a literary English man arriving at the railway station in LA is astonished by the variety of nationalities and colours: “The first thing to present itself was a slum of Africans and Filipinos, Japanese and Mexicans. And what permutations and combinations of black, yellow, and brown! What complex bastardies! And the girls – how beautiful in their artificial silk.”[1] By the time Kenneth Anger’s[2] book of this name was published in France in 1959 (with a sequel in 1984), Hollywood Babylone referred not so much to the large expatriate community, as the biblical idea that mixing people of all backgrounds and proclivities would tend only to decay and destruction. The original version of the book opens: “Hollywood was not yet a dirty word in 1916. It was just a junction of dirt roads, a solitary ‘Mission-style’ hotel, some claptrap bungalows scattered in the orange groves, and the startling apparation of a Babylon orgy in full swing in the sunshine, smack on Sunset Boulevard.” 

The orgy he’s referring to is the one orchestrated by D.W. Griffiths in Intolerance, the epic in which thousands of extras acted out scenes of idolatory and wantonness before giant plaster lions and elephants rearing up on their hind legs. The remnants of the set were still standing when two years later Alla Nazimova, the actress Adolph Zukor had called “the quintessential Queen of the Movie Whores”, bought a ‘Spanish’ mansion and a lush surrounding plot of land at 8080/8150 Sunset Boulevard. Here she established one of Hollywood’s first salons where you were as likely to find Charlie Chaplin or Valentino as her women friends and lovers (these included ex-wives of both men). They all liked to role play: “my friends call me Peter and sometimes Mimi”, Nazimova told one columnist.[3]

She was not an obvious choice for Hollywood: her look wasn’t right – on her arrival studio bosses were appalled by her moustache, insisting she shave it off, despite her claims that in Europe it was considered attractive. And her ideas were too highbrow, too literary: “I wanted to do thoughtful things, things subtle and only hinted at”, she told Djuna Barnes.[4] Trying to achieve this she spent most of the large amounts of money she earned on expensive productions like her version of Wilde’s Salomé. When her money and luck began to run out, she built twenty five apartments on the estate and in 1927 started renting them out. This is when the party really got going. 

Nazimova, a Crimean Russian, who had studied under Stanislawski and been friends with Chekhov, arrived in New York from St Petersburg, via Berlin and London, with Pavel Orlenev’s Troupe in 1905. The following year she become a sensation on Broadway, much admired for her “feline, pantherlike” Hedda Gabler, even though at the time she signed her contract she only knew a handful of English words. But like many successful immigrants she was a fast learner. And she was adaptable. When Pavel, in a jealous rage returned to Russia, her career in theatre began to wane and she was stuck playing “stage vampires”, albeit in works, an admiring Djuna Barnes thought, “besmirched rather than dimmed, her genius”[5]. So she made her bid for celluloid, its immortality seeming commensurate with her ambition. She was paid $1000 to star in her first film, War Brides, shot in New York in 1916.[6]  

The following year, David O. Selznick’s father, Lewis, helped her to complete her migration westward, taking her to Hollywood, where she put her ambition to work, producing, directing, and writing many of the films she starred in. With proceeds in hand (she was soon earning $13,000 a week) the “Woman of a Thousand Moods”, “the greatest artist of the screen”, as Metro dubbed her, took possession of her mansion for $50,000. Set in three and a half acres of tropical plants and trees, with an orange grove, lily pond, cedars and palms, and garlanded with many “bizarre birds” – the feathery kind kept in an aviary she installed; the two-legged creatures, like Chaplin’s wife Mildred Harris, or Valentino’s two wives Natacha Rambova and Jean Acker, paraded on the terrace overlooking the orange groves and vineyards to the hills opposite[7]. She lived here with fellow actor, Charles Bryant, her “pseudo-husband”[8], who was reputedly paid ten percent of her salary for acting the part. Although the two flirted in public, they “had separate bedrooms and led separate lives.”[9] 

In 1927 when The Garden opened to the public, starting as it meant to go on with an eighteen hour star-studded party, among the guests were Clara Bow, Samuel Goldwyn, Marlene Dietrich and Conrad Veidt. In the same year Hollywood started to talk – “You aint heard nothing yet!” was the famous opening line[10], an example of the kind of wit that would enliven Hollywood’s best scripts – and producers began recruiting writers in earnest. Many of them would pull up at The Garden. Besides Fitzgerald who wrote the Pat Hobby stories there - light comedies about a failed Hollywood agent - and worked on his final novel, The Loves of the Last Tycoon, guests and visitors to the bungalows and apartments (guests could rent by the night, though some stayed for years) included his friends, Dorothy Parker, George S. Kaufman, Robert Benchley, Donald Ogden Stewart and many of the Algonquin set they drew on their coattails from New York; also, at one time or another, Somerset Maugham, P. G. Wodehouse, Raymond Chandler, Ernest Hemingway, Nathanael West and his brother in law, S. J. Perelman, Andre Malraux, William Faulkner, Lillian Hellman, Dashiell Hammett, Elinor Glyn, John O’Hara and Clifford Odets.

A decade after the opening, when Fitzgerald was paying $4000 a week to live there, though still a lively talking shop, Azimova’s grand scheme to turn her home into a garden fit for modern day gods – suitably equipped with pool (it was rumoured to be shaped like the Black Sea to remind the star of her home in Yalta), courts, hotel and villas furnished with tiled Spanish kitchens and bathrooms (one with a purple toilet, another with Azimova’s black marble bath) – had financially ruined the Russian actress and producer: she was forced to to sell, stipulating only that she be allowed to visit whenever she pleased for the remainder of her life. 

But in its early years[11], The Garden was home to many glamorous, brilliant, and by American standards, unorthodox inhabitants. Garbo, the Swedish sphinx, lived there, particularly loving the pool which at the time was the biggest in Hollywood, and conducted her brief affair with John Gilbert, before returning to the company of women and gay men, whom she usually preferred. The German director, Ernst Lubitsch had an apartment; as did the Italian actor Roman Navarro, star of Ben Hur; the English were amply represented by Alexander Korda, Beatrice Lillie, Leslie Howard, David Niven, Laurence Olivier, Charles Laughton and his wife Elsa Lanchester, and Charlie Chaplin, but not Cary Grant, who wanted to stay when he first arrived in town – but couldn’t afford to.

And there were of course homegrown inhabitants who were broadminded enough to enjoy the continental clientele and, for some, to partake of the freely available drink and drugs (at The Garden, it was said, Prohibition acted more like a stimulant than an embargo): Ronald Coleman, Dorothy and Lillian Gish, John Barrymore, Clara Bow, Errol Flynn, Margaret Sullavan, Buster Keaton, Tallulah Bankhead, Harpo Marx, Tom Mix, Fairbanks and Pickford, Marlene Dietrich, Humphrey Bogart, Orson Welles, Ronald Reagan (then a liberal), Frank Sinatra  all had villas or rooms at one time or another.[12] Besides the actors, directors and writers there was an impressive array of musicians: Stravinsky, Rachmaninov (who was Harpo’s neighbour, and whose noisy piano playing disturbed the comedian’s harp practice[13]), Toscanini, Leopold Stokowski, the violinist Mischa Ellman, the opera singer Geraldine Farrar, Cole Porter, Fanny Brice  and Woody Herman. There was Joe E. Louis, the prize fighter, and perhaps most surprising of all, one of Nazimova’s early guests, Albert Einstein, visiting America in 1921 after winning the Nobel Prize. By any standards it’s an astonishing cast and it’s hard to imagine such a congregation again: today it would be impossible to accommodate the egos or the entourages. 

The Garden’s casual mixing of people from across the world broke down all kinds of barriers. The colony’s rich, beautiful, smart and successful people were confident enough to exercise the kind of sexual freedom that would land you in jail elsewhere in the country. Admittedly, much of this behaviour was closeted, but there were ways in which the message got out – photographs of female stars like Garbo, Dietrich and Hepburn in trousers, or of male stars like Cary Grant and Ronald Coleman in their pyjamas breakfasting together suggested, to those who were paying attention, that there was more than one way to live, one way to be.

All this was part of the attraction of Hollywood for writers like Gore Vidal, Angela Carter and Manuel Puig, whose fictions about film combine class and money-based analyses with invigorating sexual politics. Azimova may have been forced to shave off her “clearly defined moustache”[14], but ambiguity was a part of the seductive mystery and attraction of Hollywood, whether it was Cary Grant flouncing around in a woman’s dressing gown in Bringing Up Baby, shouting “I just went gay all of a sudden”, a crop-haired Katherine Hepburn or Lousie Brooks, disguised as boys; or Dietrich and Garbo dressed in men’s clothes and romancing women.  

Originally Nazimova called her place, The Garden of Alla, playfully adapting the title of a novel by Robert Hichens[15], but later the ‘H’ was reinstated, leaving a name that some could barely credit: “I’ll be damned” Tom Wolfe wrote to Scott Fitzgerald in 1939 on discovering his friend’s new address, “if I’ll belive anyone lives in a place called The Garden of Allah”. Tallulah Bankhead thought it “the most gruesomely named hotel in the western hemisphere.” But it became synonymous with Hollywood, a distillation of all of the pleasure – and all the anxiety – movies provoked. And most felt about The Gardens simply as George Kaufmann did: “It reminds me of Hollywood.”

Azimova and other early émigrés came to America for a chance of greater fame and money than they could earn at home, but there were others who were exiles from history: Jews who were denied the chance to prosper; escapees from the Russian revolution.[16]  With the advent of sound this extraordinary artistic and business community might have thinned out and yielded to assimilation[17], but the onset of fascism in Europe produced a new crop of exiles in search of a home. Hollywood with its large international community was an obvious choice for artistic and political dissidents.[18]  And they came, among them the actress and screenwriter Salka Viertel – another of The Garden’s habitués – her husband Berthold Viertel, and her friend Berthold Brecht.

By the Thirties this heady mix of cosmopolitanism, radicalism and remarkable payslips produced a unique atmosphere – “dialectical materialism by the pool”, the screenwriter Budd Schulberg and one-time Communist Party member[19] called it, remembering the Marxist chatter he continually heard in the mansions of the rich. Dorothy Parker, a communist and founder of the Anti-Nazi League began in Hollywood by conducting her political activities poolside from the Garden of Allah where she and her husband Robert Benchley lived for a while. In 1935 they moved into a palatial Beverly Hills home dressed with Picassos, from where she hosted her highly successful fund-raising and campaining, but she continued to haunt the Garden of Allah, calling out a reluctant Fitzgerald, her friend and once lover, to come with her to political meetings.

If the philosophy the radicals were pursuing was European in origin; their tone was pure American, coming out of a vein of homegrown comedy that ran from Mark Twain, through Fitzgerald’s close friend, the humourist Ring Lardner, to the friends of his son, Lardner Jnr, a highly paid scriptwriter in Hollywood and another member of the Party.  Parker’s sharp political mind, too, was matched by a razor wit, designed to cut down to size those deluded by ego or inflated with power: “If you want to know what God thinks of money,” she once quipped, just “look at the people he gave it to.”[21]  When Christina Stead first visited in 1935 she wrote approvingly of the American mindset, “I thought the whole country twanged with impertinence.”[22]

For those communists and fellow travellers living amid the opulence of Hollywood, giving away a percentage of one’s salary to the Party or to the fight in Spain, was not always enough to ease the contradictions between fantastic personal wealth and communist or egalitarian beliefs. “I was the only person [in Hollywood] to buy a yacht and join the Communist Party in the same week”[23] said the actor Sterling Hayden, self-mockingly.  But he was not alone: guilt about earning vast amounts of money in the middle of a Depression – and as fascism advanced in Europe – had been a motivating factor for becoming active in left-wing politics. For many in Hollywood, though, the point was not to redistribute down, but to level up. Communist idealism should mean an end to deprivation and after the revolution there would be bouquets and banquets for all; like Nazimova, everyone would be free to imagine and create their own paradise, to share in the bounty of the Garden of Allah.

In his autobiography Donald Ogden Stewart, a friend of Fitzgerald’s and later one of the Hollywood Ten, describes this optimistic belief in the redistribution of wealth and fun, in which, rather than dismantling palaces, their doors would be opened to all:

Let it be understood…that the romantic “communist” did not beat his Hawes and Curtis stiff dress shirt into a hairy one and set out with begging bowl to Do Good.  I wanted to do something about the problem of seeing to it that a great many people were allowed into the amusement park.  My new-found philosophy was an affirmation of the good life, not a rejection of it…¹⁴⁷

It’s this mood that Christina Stead captures so well in I’m Dying Laughing, her epic novel about left-wing writers in Hollywood[24], and which goes some way to explaining how even those who instinctively loathed the Party discipline of ‘collective responsibility’, or the crudeness of the Zhdanovite line on culture – how even ‘romantics’ like Fitzgerald – kept company with communists and were periodically caught in the net of their enthusiasm.[25]

And for a while, in the Hollywood gardens at least, this view of what Ogden Stewart calls “romantic” communism, could be sustained.  But in I’m Dying Laughing what begins in California as an attraction to the ideal of plenitude over scarcity is stretched to the limits of credibility when Stead’s protagonists, now exiled from America by the blacklist and living in the lap of luxury in postwar France, sing out their battle-cry, “crêpe flamandes for the masses!…Pressed ducks for the people.”  This, while those around them starve on rations and rotten bread. It’s an outcome that suggests such ‘romaticism’ was always self-deceiving, the idealistic belief that the world could be a more sumptuous place in which everyone could be equally generous and prodigal, revealed now, flagrantly (and perfectly in tune with the postwar mood), as the mask of bad faith. 

Even before the war, however, the mood of hope, the belief that good comrades could defeat fascism, had begun to turn. And the self-ironising American sensibility that had proved so winning in a string of Thirties movies (so liberating and expressive of a democracy in full flight) was starting to sour. By 1939, and the Hitler-Stalin pact, the ironies of such a life were proving for many too great to endure. Thinking of the sui generis nature of the dialectic in Hollywood, Emily, the central character of I’m Dying Laughing, another communist writer, derides herself for betraying her talent by screenwriting for money rather than working on something literary, serious and “authentic”, while at the same time, against her better impulses, continuing to toe the Party line, “Jehesus-Jehosaphat!  I’m always doing the opposite of what I want. It’s dialectical I guess. The latest word for selling-out.  Ha-ha-ha.”[26] 

But it’s just a foreshadowing of greater treachery to come: Stead’s protagonists (as in life Hayden and Schulberg and countless others were to do), end their dream of being “on the side of the angels” in history, and name the names of their erstwhile comrades, giving them up to the investigating committees. The rapid descent from communist idealism to McCarthyite backlash was, of course, reflected in the films that were made in Hollywood.  From 1947 when the first HUAC sittings took place, to the breaking of the blacklist by Otto Preminger and Kirk Douglas in 1959, a decade of trials, revelations, betrayals, false names, regretted lives, reached even to the higer echelons of Hollywood where those who like Humphrey Bogart dared initially to demonstrate against the trials, found themselves locked in hotel rooms signing ‘confessions’ for FBI agents and shadowy right-wing business organisations like the League of America.

The political power of these forces was such that even movie heroes, men like Bogart and Gene Kelly, could not escape their grasp. In the end, Bogart hung his head and requested a closed hearing of the HUAC in which he declared he had never been a communist[27], while Kelly, as powerful as he was, could not save the career of his wife, the actress Besty Blair, a communist, but never a Party member: she was blacklisted, and the fall-out from this destroyed their marriage, as it did for many couples in the industry.[28]

The Garden, of course, had always had its snakes, right wing residents like Ginger and her rabidly anti-communist mother, and the ultimate snake waiting to slough off his skin and usher in the new Cold War politics, Ronald Reagan. By the Fifties the paranoia and loss of faith evident in the film colony, where writers and friends betrayed one another to save their own necks, was reflected in the Garden, now a tattier and more menacing place: there were frequent drunken brawls, and the occupants were as likely to be police or conmen as actors or writers. Many felt the final party held before the Garden closed in April 1959, where guests came dressed in costumes as early film stars, was proof that the dream was over:  a diminshing self-parody that mocked the Garden’s once-dazzling spirit of originality.

Inevitably Azimova’s Gardens succumbed to the dreariness of modern times - eventually paradise was paved and a parking lot put in its place[29], but it persisted in the imagination, at least, as a place of freedom and tolerance. In 1946 a gay cabaret club opened in a Seattle basement with the same name. A regular visitor there remembered this new Garden as heaven on earth: “in it we found love, understanding, companionship, friendship, and a common bond. We were more or less one big family.”[30]  The rare combination of conviviality and creativity that Azimova fostered in her wild Garden, made it, as Harpo Marx once said, ”a pretty mad place”. For the same reason, Artie Shaw, just one of Harpo’s talented neighbours, understood the Garden of Allah was “one of the few places so absurd that people could be themselves.” 

[2] Kenneth Anger’s played the Indian Prince in Max Reinhardt’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, cf WC Carter.

[3] Gavin Lambert, Nazimova, 1997, p.210.

[4] Djuna Barnes I Could Never Be Lonely Without a Husband, 1985, p.358.

[5] Barnes I Could Never Be Lonely Without a Husband, 1985, p. 354. Barnes saw Nazimova for the first time in one of these second rate productions, yet still recognised her greatness: “She wore ten good yards of that slinky material which, when molded about the hips, spells a woman bent on the destruction of the soul.” p.356.

[6] The film was War Brides. Axel Madsen, The Sewing Circle, 102.

[7] Graham, The Garden of Allah, 1970, 13.

[8] Lambert, Nazimova, 1997, p.?

[9] Lambert, Nazimova, 1997, p. 207.

[10] The Jazz Singer

[11] It was eventually demolished in August 1959.

[12] Once Bankhead, after a particularly drunken party where she jumped into the pool with Johnny Weissmuller and emerged naked, proceeded to remove the ‘Gar’ from the outside wall sign, re-christening the place, more suitably she no doubt felt, The den of Allah.

[13] “I was flattered to have such a distinguished neighbour, but I still had to practice. So I got rid of him in my own way. I opened the doors and all the windows in my place and began to play the first bars of Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C-sharp Minor, over and over, fortissimo.” Rachmaninov moved to another bungalow, “the farthest possible from that dreadful harpist.” Harpo Speaks!, 1961, p. 284-5.

[14] Graham, The Garden of Allah, 14.

[15] Mazimova starred in a play of the book in 1909 and an early film was made with Lillian Gish. But in 1936 Marlene Dietrich and Charles Boyer starred in a new version. Gay cabaret…

[16] Alfred Appel, Nabokov’s Dark Cinema

[17] Many, of course, were assimilated to the extent that they were prepared to anglicise their names – Jewish and non Jewish – from Greta Gustafasson (Garbo) to Nathan Weinstein (Nathanael West).

[18] Hollywood at this time had plenty of space and fine skies, and there were many beautiful people who lived free, unfettered lives, but later incomers were not so enamoured.  On her arrival in Hollywood, Betsy Blair, Gene Kelly’s young wife, noted that there were rats gnawing at the bottom of the pine trees.

[19] Schulberg was another friend of Fitzgerald’s who had worked with him on a script for Winter Carnival. After his death he wrote a thinly disguised portrait of Fitzgerald, emphasisng his image as a self-ruined romantic, in his novel, The Disenchanted, 1951.

[21] Parker is a good example of the dilemmas of writing, politics, and money many in Hollywood faced at this time.  She was a member of the Party in 1933-4 and during the five year period from 1933-8, in which she and her husband, the actor-writer Robert Campbell, were most successful in Hollywood, they earned between them an estimated $500,000: her share for screenwriting, work she considered equivalent to “the raggedy printing of a backward six-year old”.  At the same time they were highly effective left-wing activists, as well as establishing the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, they set up the Motions Picture Arts Committee to Aid Republican Spain and the Motion Picture Democratic Committee, and were hosts to numerous fundraising events.  During its investigations the HUAC estimated that in the 1930s over $1,000,000 had been collected from Hollywood by eight Popular Front organisations.  (Hamilton, 1991, pp. 98, 107-9.)

[22] Stead, ‘It Is All a Scramble for Boodle”, Australian Book Review, 141, 6.1992, p. 22

[23] Doug McLelland, ed., Starspeak: Hollywood on Everything, London: Faber & Faber, 1987, p. 252.

[24] The novel is a roman à clef based on the lives of Stead’s friends, the successful screenwriting couple, Ruth McKenney, and her husband Richard Bransten.

[25] Though Fitzgerald seems to have been particularly swayed by its apocalyptic analysis of the fate of the world in capitalist hands. Find quote

[26] IDL.

[27] He repeated the assertion publicly for Photoplay Magazine in 1948, in an article entitled, “I am not a Communist”.

[28] Even an Oscar nomination couldn’t save Blair from the blacklist. Her marriage in pieces she crossed the Channel to England and began her life again. Here she married Lindsay Anderson, continued to act – often in TV films like Philip Sidney’s film of Graham Greene’s ‘A Little Place of the Edgware Road’, and eventually wrote a memoir of her time in Hollywood, The Memory of All That, 2003.

[29] As Joni Mitchell sang in ‘Big Yellow Taxi’.

[30] Don Paulson, An Evening at the Garden of Allah, 1996, p.167.

That is going to be a rather specific blog entry, but today I want to go into detail about three manga-series that would make great video games. Before going any further I´d like to explain that manga and anime come hand in hand with video games, that is what I believe. That is, if you´r fond of Japanese video games. Sure, typical western games don´t feature any resemblance of Japanese comics and cartoons. Maybe, though, that is also why I prefer Japanese video games, as they generally feature more stylized visuals, maybe thanks to the country´s heavy art industry. Not to stray further away, I´ll be talking about Gantz, Blame! and Berserk.

If you watched the Gantz-anime that unfortunately didn´t get a third season and afterwards decided to read the manga for more, you know: This series went from the weird to the epic. The series´ concept would be rather easy to make into a video game (tbh there even might already be a game, but it definitely wasn´t released in Europe). Simply throw the player into a new mission each time and have him face all kinds of new, bizarre aliens. There´s not that much about specific gameplay details, as it´d be a simple third-person-shooter, maybe with some climb-mechanics and Crysis-like super powers. It´s the multiplayer part that counts. I´d imagine there to be two kinds of multiplayer: First one would let other players join your game on-the-fly, taking on missions together. The other mode would be even more reminiscent of the series: You gather a group of friends that you start the game with. Then the game puts you into super-weird and hard missions. Whoever survives the longest wins, it´s that simple. There´s really no other franchise I could see work that well as a online-heavy video game. The mixture of cool art style, super powers, weird aliens, team-play and mission-based gameplay could make for hundreds of hours. Maybe think of the Monster Hunter-franchise, but with a lot more fun, involving combat-system, a mixture of Zelda, Crysis and Devil May Cry. Yeah, that´d be fun.

Just as fun as the next manga-franchise could be when turned into a video game. Whoever doesn´t already know Blame!, let me explain: The main character is called Killy and he´s traveling around within this thing called Mega Structure. It´s some scifi-series where the whole world is covered by, well, buildings, if you want to call that structures that. Killy´s mission is to find network genes from before the mutation. I forgot why he searched those but it doesn´t matter for the moment. This manga doesn´t feature a lot of words, and even that´s quite an understatement. The Blame!-manga´s strength is its incredible atmosphere. You´re there in such a strange, bizarre environment, not knowing what´ll happen next. There are those dangerous silicon creatures, the “bad guys” of the series. Weird, artificial looking…robots? that will kill you or any human being. Speaking of human beings, time has gone by that long that there are different kinds of human beings. So it happens that Killy, who´s just a normal human (well, not totally normal), meets other human-like beings that look just like him…but are double his size. Mentioned Mega Structure consists of almost uncountable layers, each of which is like its own whole world. So, what would a video game about this look like? See, there´s this gun Killy is using, the Graviton Beam Emitter. Let me just say that this is the coolest weapon I´ve ever seen in any manga, anime or video game. That gun doesn´t need ammunition, it draws its energy from its user. More importantly, though, it´s capable of destroying almost anything. It shoots a rather slim, unspectacular energy beam, but that beam breaks through anything that comes across its way. It can deflect enemy weapon´s beams and it can destroy walls and layers that nothing else in the world of Blame! could even scratch. It needs to be that powerful, though, because it´s the only effective weapon against these silicon creatures. So how I´d imagine a Blame!-video game is that you wander around in quiet, weird, bizarre environments for most of the time, a lot like ICO. Whenever an enemy appears, it´d be a boss battle. No meaningless minions that serve no purpose but to lengthen the game. Gameplay-wise it´d be about evading the enemy´s attack to concentrate your characters focus, and then, at a crucial point, fire the gun to one-hit whatever enemy. What gameplay would be like? That is easy: Like Devil May Cry, but not as flashy, more down-to-earth movements and a lot more dirty.

The last of the three, Berserk, would be my personal favorite game ever. This is a franchise that needs WiiMotionPlus. Just give me direct control over Gut´s gigantic sword, throw me into the depths of hell and let me slay the most bizarre, creepiest monsters there´ve ever been. One problem of MotionPlus is that it cannot simulate the weight of a sword, so whenever you swing the wiimote in WiiSports Resort it is breaking the immersion of swinging a real sword. A Berserk-game wouldn´t have that problem because Guts…is awesome. Thing is, he can swing is giant sword super fast and with the highest durability of any manga-character ever. That´s why it totally fits into the game´s context to be able to swing a sword that effortlessly. There have been Berserk-games in the past, but I´d really love to see one featuring MotionPlus, and also one that goes more after the experience of the moment instead of just retelling the known story. Throw me into the world of the Eclipse and let´s see how long I can survive. That´s the Berserk-game I´d love to play. Gameplay-wise? If there´ll be a Zelda Wii-game released I think that will be a great example of how a Berserk-game should play like (with a sword 3 or 4 times as long as Link´s, haha).

Now, what all three of these manga-series and my “turning-them-into-video games“-wishes share is that they offer the greatest, deepest atmosphere possible. Throw away crappy stories, throw away cut-scenes, throw away annoying gameplay-limiting stuff. Just…get me into this game, let me explore on my own and let me do it how I want to do it. And that´s really what it´s all about. All those games that are hyped right now, Modern Warfare 2, Uncharted 2 or New Super Mario Bros. Wii are, in the end, nothing but brainless time killers. Do some tasks for 6-7 hours, then the game´s over and you haven´t seen anything you didn´t see before. Not even talking about “having experienced anything new”. Video gamers always try to paint their hobby as a form of art, expressing how it´s matured, but the whole medium is still very young, still very unexplored. Nearly all modern video games follow a pattern that games from ten, fifteen or twenty years ago created. As long as there´s not try to break free from that pattern there cannot be any kind of “maturing”, and the whole art-argument will stay a difficult topic. There are exceptions, like ICO, Endless Ocean or “The Path-game” (google that one, it´s great), but those are infinitely outnumbered by hyped blockbuster-games that keep doing the same and the same again. And from the look at even the most hardcore-internet boards, gamers don´t want that to change. Which I find saddening. Maybe it just needs more time to get games into this direction of a more direct experience. But at the moment we´re rather heading towards video games that I have a hard time calling them “games” at all. “Cinematic” is the big hyped thing of the time and it´s been only going stronger with the years. I remember when I bought the first Tomb Raider on DVD (yeah, shame on me) there was this interactive game where you could move Lara with the buttons of your DVD-player´s remote and she would go and say stuff and whatever. Maybe that´s the future all those self-proclaiming hardcore-gamers want. All I know is: I do not want such a gaming future. I wanna play and interact as directly with the ingame-world as possible. And damn, would those three manga-series be great as video games.

Anthology covers last 5 years of Megatoneâs music activity. Divided into 3 parts with total duration of 1 h 33min it depictures its authorâs musical searches in the worlds of ambient, IDM, space, ambient experimental and cinematic neoclassical.

www-tracey.archive.org/details/Megatone-Anthology

http://silent.com.md/label/2009/11/14/megatone-anthology-slnt007/

Ok, first Off, girls getting a f*ckin award for that video!!!

Cinematic or what, I feel like there’s part 2. WOW.

Now can you imagine when Rihanna goes to release a DVD of her music videos how good its gonna be. Mmm  Hmmm Yesss.!!

Go RiRi!

*EDIT* : They keep taking the video down, I’ll keep looking but if I dont find a High quality one your gonna have to wait a while . Sorry Guys If you missed it.

Ο Rob Dougan έγινε ευρύτερα γνωστός από το το soundtrack της ταινίας The Matrix, στο οποίο συμπεριλαμβανόταν το κλασικό, πλέον, κομμάτι “Clubbed To Death”. Το 2001, ο Rob Dougan, κυκλοφόρησε την ολοκληρωμένη δουλειά του, με τίτλο “Furious Angels”. Trip Hop ολκής, με ηλεκτρονικά στοιχεία αλλά και cinematic ατμόσφαιρα, το “Furious Angels” αποτελεί ένα μοναδικό soundtrack, ονειροπόλο και ταξιδιάρικο, με μελωδίες που θα σε συγκλονίσουν… 4/5!

robdougan.org

myspace.com/douganrob

Rồi mộng úa thay màu xanh. (P1090865-W1), originally uploaded by Nguyen K. Do.

Eltham, November 2009.
Nguyen K. Do © 2009

Author: Erik Larson

Title: The Devil in the White City

Genre: Non-Fiction

Publication Date: 2003

Number of Pages: 390

Geographical Setting: Chicago

Time Period: 1890’s

Series: N/A

Plot Summary: This book is an account of the Chicago Columbian Exposition (World’s Fair) in 1893. It discusses detailed accounts of the construction and the people involved in planning it, as well as the life of serial killer Herman Mudgett and the people he preyed upon. The book is very interesting because it is a true account that is filled with historical details, but it reads like a novel. Daniel H. Burnham was the architect in charge of creating the “White City” of the fair, and had to overcome numerous obstacles to do it; even death of his business partner. Dr. Holmes (Herman Mudgett) was responsible for many murders before, during, and after the fair, and the account of his killings is very chilling and true to life. He killed between 27 and 200 people (no one knows for sure how many) and even constructed his own World’s Fair Hotel to lure victims (it had a crematorium and gas chamber). The book switches points of view from Burnham and Holmes, which works because the reader often needs a break from the psychotic Holmes chapters.

Subject Headings: Mudgett, Herman W., 1861-1896; Burnham, Daniel Hudson, 1846-1912; World’s Columbian Exposition (1893: Chicago, Ill.); Serial murderers- Chicago, Illinois; Serial murders- Chicago, Illnois- Case studies; Architects- Chicago, Illinois; Deception in men; Murders; the Nineties (19^th century); Chicago, Illinois- History- 19^th century

Appeal: Cinematic, complex, dramatic, historical details, investigative, compelling, dark, deliberate, suspenseful, tragic, urban, violent, vivid, historically political, multiple plot lines

3 terms that best describe this book: World’s Fair, serial killer, Chicago

Similar Authors and Works

Non-Fiction:

1. The Beast of Chicago: an account of the life and crimes of Herman W. Mudgett, known to the world as H.H. Holmes by Rick Geary- Tells the true account of the life & crimes of Holmes. It contains black-and-white artwork by the author.
2. Jack the Ripper: the uncensored facts: a documented history of the Whitechapel murders of 1888 by Paul Begg- Tells the true story of another famous serial killer; Jack the Ripper in London.
3. Sin in the Second City: madams, ministers, playboys and the battle for America’s soul by Karen Abbott- True history of America’s most famous brothel, the Everleigh Club in Chicago from 1900 to 1911.

Fiction:

1. A Proper Pursuit by Lynn N. Austin- Violet Hayes’ mother has been missing since Violet was 9 years old, and Violet goes to the Chicago during the World’s Fair to find her.
2. Loving Frank: A Novel by Nancy Horan- Novel about Frank Lloyd Wright, who was mentioned in The Devil in the White City.
3. Bloody Mary by Joe Konrath- Chicago police lieutenant Jacqueline Daniels deals with her personal life while trying to track down a serial killer.

Bonus: The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule- The true story of Ted Bundy, a student who was put to death for killing multiple people.

It’s easy to mock celebrities, actors in particular, who stress to the public how difficult and important their lives are and how much fame belabors those facts. Especially when we see them living such pampered and extravagant lives. I’m here to discuss five men in Hollywood who actually DO live rather industrious existanses and yet fail to ever complain about them. In fact, most are as hard-working as they are do to their love for what they do, and wouldn’t have it any other way. Now, check all your false pretenses at the door, this list takes NO monetary statistics into account to tabulate this list. I’m simply conducting an opinionated grouping of five actors who I feel have taken on more than most men can handle in the show biz…biz, and I’m compiling this list in relation to this point in time, Autumn of 2009. Yes, Seth Rogen has appeared in MULTITUDES of films over the last five years, but after Funny People and Observe and Report of this year, the guy has been laying pretty low. This list tabulates the mainstreamers who have been racking up leading role credits in muliple expansive flicks. So, without further ado…

5. Johnny Depp

To say that I respect this man would be an intense understatement. His acting prowess is some of the best of our time, so it makes me EXTREMELY happy to see him inundated with work. If you’ve been living under the sea (visions of The Little Mermaid just popped into my head. Walt Disney prevails) for the past year then you probably haven’t heard of Depp’s numerous forays into film he has recently undertaken. Public Enemies was the only work he appeared in that was released in ‘09, however, he has been fast at work on massive cinematic staples of the 2010 movie-going season that will almost-assuredly dominate the market. The first being Tim Burton’s reiteration of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Depp plays The Mad Hatter in Burton’s CGI-laden could-be-wonderful-could-be-terrible still up-in-the-air retelling of the classic story. Headlining next to Anne Hathaway, Helena Bonham Carter, Matt Lucas, and Alan Rickman, the film has all the makings of a complete cinematic win, the screenshots and trailers, however, leave doubt in my mind, as CGI-laden, as I said before, is putting it nicely. Time will tell. Depp also was involved in Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, filling one of the three roles created after lead actor Heath Ledger’s passing. Depp, along with Colin Farrell and Jude Law, will stand in for Ledger as alternate versions of Ledger’s character, to help the stroy along despite the events that took place prior to the film’s completion. The next chapter in the Hunter S. Thompson chronicles, The Rum Diary, is also in post, in which Depp will reprise his role as the gonzo-journalist.
In addition to these films that Depp has finished, the newest film in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise is slated for a 2011 release date and is currently in the earliest stages of pre-production. Sin City 3, which Depp has been rumored to be involved with basically from its inception, is also geared up for a 2012 release (funny considering Sin City 2 is still stuck in developmental hell).
And here’s the kicker. IMDB lists Depp as in development with FOURTEEN new titles, as well. Among them, a Dali biopic and The Lone Ranger. Wow, simply wow. While these developmental deals can fall through at any time, they can also usually indicate desire and co-involvement between the parties of the actors and the producers. It will be interesting to see where Depp’s career goes looking towards these titles.

4. Brad Pitt

Here’s another guy with developmental deals in spades. The ‘ole rusty, trusty IMDB has Pitt pegged with sixteen deals, the most I could find. In addition to being attached to The sequel to Downey Jrs Sherlock Holmes vehicle, Pitt is also listed with World War Z and a Steve McQueen biopic. Goo.
Pitt tore up the screen in Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds this summer, and has currently been attached to the fledgling project Moneyball, which is listed as being in the earliest stages of production, despite the fact that it has no director. Pitt is further attached to The Tree of Life and The Lost City of Z, as well as providing a voice to the upcoming animated flick Oobermind. He’s also rumored to be apart of 2012’s upcoming The Odyssey and The Sparrow.

3. George Clooney

The former Sexiest Man in America has never slowed down since his rocket-propelled rise to fame in the mid-to-late 90’s as well. Clooney most recently has released The Men Who Stare at Ghosts, a loosely based adaptation of the book of the same name which regards a 1970’s to 1980’s military experiment that documented telepathic phenomena. In addition to this recent film, though, Clooney finished up providing voice work for the titular role in Wes Anderson’s upcoming The Fantastic Mr. Fox, alongside Bill Murray, Meryl Streep, and Jason Schwartzman, as well as polishing off his role in the Jason Reitman-helmed Up in the Air, which is also currently in post. These are merely his acting credits for 2009, though, the man also executive produced the Matt Damon vehicle The Informant! and Playground, a movie I honestly couldn’t find too much on. As far as his queue list goes, IMDB has him cited with ten in-development deals.

2. Jim Carrey

Jim Carrey is a man of many faces. The actor became famous for his rubber-faced persona that landed him a slew of comedic work in the mid-to-late 90’s and a career launching pad that ANY actor would be proud of. By the turn of the century, however, Carrey was becoming far more versatile as an actor. Already dabbling in the dramatic with The Truman Show, Liar Liar,, and the INCREDAMAZING Andy Kaufman biopic, Man on the Moon. Carrey then went on to tackle the serious side of life full-tilt in Charlie Kaufman’s magnificent Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, opposite Kate Winslet, The Majestic, and the box office blunder The Number 23. He has returned to comedy in recent years, however, and, as always, has fully immersed himself in his roles. Recently released is the Zemeckis-penned adaptation of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol in which Carrey provided the movements and voices to Scrooge at all ages of life AND the three spirits that visit him! Encompassing multiple accents, multiple ages of life, and multiple SPIRITUAL BEINGS, Carrey tackled the project head-on while keeping busy with multiple other projects, such as I Love You, Philip Morris, the tale of an escaped homosexual convict who goes on a quest to find his lover that was released from prison before he was. The film has been receiving stellar reviews and co-stars Ewan McGregor opposite Carrey in this bold and self-titled dark comedy. All the while that these two flicks have been in post, Carrey has both been bulking up and studying up to play Curly Howard in the upcoming Three Stooges revamp with Paul Giamatti and possibly Benecio Del Toro. This was all considered fact for the longest time and was referenced multiple times by Carrey’s apparent weight gain in the tabloids and public citings, but, as of late, Carrey has been described as withdrawing from the project. It doesn’t negate the fact that the man was taking on multiple roles immediately after finishing his previously mentioned two. Further, IMBD.com has Carrey listed in FOUR different upcoming development deals. Which may seem normal for a star of his status, but when you consider the work load he will indefinitely take on with these upcoming roles, it makes a profound statement on his desire to never be bored.
In addition to his films and the launch of a fully-functioning personal website that has actually made the rounds and received a warm/geeky reception from the film/internet blogosphere, Carrey and his wife Jenny McCarthy have consistantly maintained their involvement in the charity Generation Rescue, which strives to find alternative ways to treat autism in children. Not bad for a man who was talking with his butt a little over 10 years ago.

1. Nicolas Cage

Go ahead and laugh (you’ve earned it) but the man has yet to produce a dull movie (I said ‘dull’ not ‘bad’) and his work output is something for ANY actor to admire, regardless of how badly he phones roles in. Before I continue, most of you know, but for those who don’t, everything I joke about Nicolas Cage comes from a place of sincere reverance. Yes, the man takes part in AWFUL movies (which, given his current economic situation could just be to keep the lights on) but in each film he’s in he is always FULLY committed to the story being told. And I’m sorry, but I’d rather watch Cage run around in a Bear suit any day FULLY EMBRACING THE ROLE than see Tom Hanks win ANOTHER Oscar for appearing in some adaptation of a story set in the 1940’s. ALL TANGENTS ASIDE, Cage has kept himself QUITE stacked as of late. In early 2009 the CGI-Fest known as G-Force dropped with Cage providing a voice as well as Cage’s vehicle Knowing, in which he played the lead. Throughout the remainder of the year he has worked on The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Matthew Vaughn’s Kick-Ass, Season of the Witch, and Werner FOOKING Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. Did I mention the voice that he provided for Astro Boy? No? Well, lump that in there as well.
IMDB has him attached to 4 deals in development, one of which being (GET READY!!!) Ghost Rider 2! Which creators have said will distance itself from the original as a revamp, not a sequel. Yet, it still stars Cage as the lead. Oh, how I LOVE this man! It simply amazes me what Hollywood will greenlight.

And speaking of hard working, (and by hard-working, I mean shameless self-promotion!) visit my sketch troupe’s Youtube or Facebook and comment/subscribe/hate/love/befriend/never talk to us again/enjoy our attempts at making you laugh!

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Melbourne, October 2009.
Nguyen K. Do © 2009

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… để chết trong tình-cờ.

Eltham, November 2009.
Nguyen K. Do © 2009

Ô hay! Tại sao ta mãi quay cuồng chốn này?! (P1090780-W1-3), originally uploaded by Nguyen K. Do.

Eltham, November 2009.
Nguyen K. Do © 2009

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Eltham, November 2009.
Nguyen K. Do © 2009

01. Discotheque Dancing
02. You’ve Been Spiked
03. Drink Me Hot
04. Wrong Alley Street (part 1)
05. Riviera 69
06. Shellah V.
07. Wrong Alley Street (part 3)
08. Waves of Love
09. A Part In That Show
10. Early Morning Wanderings
11. Waking Up In The Park
12. The Man With The Suitcase (bonus track)
13. The Wait (bonus track)

French producer/DJ Chris Joss has spiked the musical cocktail with an intoxicating mix of funky bass lines, wah guitars, and Hammond keys which pulsate over rooty sounding drums. With a dose of obscure samples, scratching and retro-futurist ambiances, Mssr. Joss creates a truly unique cinematic universe. Multi-instrumentalist/DJ/producer Chris Joss presents his acid jazzy electronica with a wonderful combination of quirk and cool. He’s as much David Holmes as he is Thievery Corporation, and as retro as he is future. All these qualities make You’ve Been Spiked a feel-good record for cool cats and one of those “if you ain’t dancing, you must be dead” albums. There are the usual wah-wah guitars, Hammond organs, and Italian soundtrack moments that the Thievery Corporation and their ESL roster love so much, but rarely are the pieces put together with such purpose. Barely anything sounds sampled and even though Joss is a one-man band, instruments play off one another like it’s a live jam session.

I’ve had my eye on this band for some time now, I first saw them at the Luminaire when they supported Jeniferever and even though I only caught the last few tracks, they blew me away to much to enjoy the headliners. So I bought this after.

In my eyes; a great album. Her Name Is Calla are amongst the bands I would like to see influence the UK music scene in a big way. The Heritage, released in 2008, is a well produced piece of work that captures the band well, which is an achievement given that they are probably more of a live band, and very loud at times! You can tell that they’re a talented bunch who appreciate their instruments to sound good.

As for the music, their set up enables them to create really nice soundscapes and play with a wide range of dynamics. They have violin, cello, and horns on top of the classic rock set up with tons of effects. They also mess around with electronic samples and beats which adds to the chill of the music. There are sections with beautiful string harmonies, others with desolate piano melodies and others with layered distorted guitars, crashing cymbals and feedback giving everything an air of chaos. The tracks, despite being unconventional lengths and structures, are beautifully arranged and progress in a satisfying way. Tom Morris’ vocal melodies echo themselves throughout the album, and some violin riffs are repeated at separate occasions in different musical contexts. Their mesmerizing sound recalls the soundscapes produced by bands like Godspeed You! Black Emperor, but with a Jeff Buckley ’style’ singer.

I liked the way the music sometimes seemed minimal for a 6 or 7 piece, but actually had quite a few layers that just served as atmospherics. I think this is one of their strong points because their build-ups are always drawn out but don’t get boring and seem to explode out of nowhere. The track I am talking about is track 2 on the album; New England. WHAT AN ENDING! Definitely the highlight of the album for me.

Lastly, a section which I always forget about, but that I always remember happily, is the hidden last section in Rebirth. I always forget about it because the band decided to put a 5 minute silent gap between it and the opening song on track #6 (which is annoying- why make it difficult for people?). Nevertheless, an interesting coda to the album, which leaves us quite uplifted after some intense moments.

Would I recommend it? Yes.