Passages

[soundchaser]

Mike Pinder, founding member and former keyboardist of The Moody Blues.

[Mr Sausage]

Helen Vendler, preeminent literary scholar and meticulous close reader of poetry.

[Calvin]

Michael Verhoeven, aged 85. His 1970 film, o.k., was the cause of controversy at that year's Berlin Film Festival where the jury, headed by George Stevens, held a 7-2 vote in favour of removing it from contention on grounds of anti-Americanism and the ensuing backlash led to the jury disbanding and the cancellation of the competition. The film was recently restored and released on DVD by Edition Filmmuseum.

Verhoeven would later win the Silver Bear at the 1990 edition of the festival for The Nasty Girl, which also won a BAFTA and bagged an Oscar nomination.

I've wanted to see his film The White Rose for a long time but it seems hard to come by (with subtitles).

[colinr0380]

I have only seen The Nasty Girl but it is a great film about the necessity of speaking inconvenient truths, even if they may result in you becoming a pariah. Because how will you understand the world and be able to move on as a society otherwise? Although maybe that is the point for those trying to conceal their involvement. And also the rather important idea being wrestled with (which is kind of relevant currently in the era of reparations being demanded for historical colonialism) of how much responsibility do you take on for the actions of the older generation: your parents, your town, your country. Do you hunker down and pretend it is all in the past? Or acknowledge the legacy, but also that you aren't responsible for acts committed long before you existed.

I think I would be most curious to see My Mother's Courage, starring Pauline Collins, and which probably would have received a UK television screening (as The Nasty Girl did) if it had come out a few years earlier. And Killing Cars (NSFW) from its synopsis sounds like it might be a car-centric take on The Man In The White Suit!

[thirtyframesasecond]

The Nasty Girl was an excellent film; a town collectively forgetting and rewriting its past and a plucky young girl unwilling to let this lie to her own personal cost. Fassbinder's BRD trilogy also focused on the forgetting of the past and the refusal to acknowledge or take responsibility for it.

[beamish14]

Is O.K. worth a blind buy? Pretty remarkable how that film, De Palma’s Casualties of War, and Kazan’s The Visitors are all connected

[hearthesilence]

Author Paul Auster

[Yakushima]

Author Paul Auster

R.I.P.
I read this news right after I finished watching Smoke. Speak of the coincidences.

[swo17]

I also just watched Smoke and the follow-up today!

[Mr Sausage]

Author Paul Auster

Read The Music of Chance some years ago and was unimpressed. James Wood, not someone I often agree with, has an epic takedown of Auster that I reread from time to time, and it’s hard to imagine anyone recovering from such a vigorous hatchet job.

[swo17]

Author Paul Auster

Read The Music of Chance some years ago and was unimpressed

Can't speak for the book but the film is quite good and supposedly changes the ending

[Mr. Deltoid]

Author Paul Auster

R.I.P.
I read this news right after I finished watching Smoke. Speak of the coincidences.

Bizarre. I'm currently in the middle of reading The New York trilogy for the first time. Not really sure what to make of it. It sets up an intriguing premise, but then subverts expectations to an extent that I found increasingly obtuse.
Always loved Smoke though. And The Music of Chance really caught me off guard on first viewing. Been waiting to see it again for a long while.

[John Cope]

I'm a huge fan of Auster and have been for decades. He was a mighty formative influence upon me (The New York Trilogy in particular, but especially City of Glass). Having said that I have also had a contentious relationship with his work (somewhat similar to how I feel about Stephen Poliakoff). The early work was what made him for me and he increasingly lost me (or lost his way) in the later years (also similar to Poliakoff). I struggled a lot with those later works, eventually became reconciled to some, even reevaluated my entire response to others, and yet for me that is where his greatest flaws emerge. Still, genuinely great and potently powerful in his literary conceptions more often than not. I would also highly recommend his excellent poetry and his first feature film as a director, Lulu on the Bridge, which I like very much (his second, not so much).

[Jonathan S]

I'm only familiar with Auster's novel The Book of Illusions, which a work colleague gave me about 20 years ago because it centres on the rediscovery of a (fictitious) silent film comedian! I remember it only vaguely and I think only the subject matter encouraged me to finish it.

[MichaelB]

Author Paul Auster

Read The Music of Chance some years ago and was unimpressed

Can't speak for the book but the film is quite good and supposedly changes the ending

It significantly changes the novel's rather cop-out ending, very much for the better - and, in a really nice touch, Paul Auster himself pops up in a cameo at that point, as if to say "I'm the original author and I approve this alteration".

[Fiery Angel]

I just finished reading Salman Rushdie's "Knife" and he mentions Auster (a close friend) several times.

[thirtyframesasecond]

I've only read the early Austers - NY Trilogy, The Music of Chance, Leviathan and Mr Vertigo. All superb novels.

[hearthesilence]

Duane Eddy. "A self-taught electric guitar virtuoso, he influenced a generation of musicians. One of them, John Fogerty, called him rock’s first guitar god."

[John Cope]

I just finished reading Salman Rushdie's "Knife" and he mentions Auster (a close friend) several times.

Rushdie was actually intended for the Dafoe part in Lulu on the Bridge which is fascinating to consider but Auster had to scuttle that plan after so many on the crew voiced their discomfort with it given the fatwa on Rushdie.

[hearthesilence]

Richard Tandy of the Electric Light Orchestra. Tandy appeared on all but two of the band’s studios albums. Originally hired as their live bassist, Tandy ultimately became ELO’s full-time keyboardist in 1972. His playing on instruments including the Minimoog, Clavinet, Mellotron, and piano became a signature of the band’s sound. He also contributed backing vocals and worked hand-in-hand with Lynne on various song arrangements.

Truth be told, I haven't been the biggest ELO fan, but eventually someone gifted me the two-CD compilation Strange Magic during the pandemic, and for the most part they came off as a very good singles band. (Not their cover of "Roll Over Beethoven," but almost all of their hit singles make fine ear candy.)

[jazzo]

I adore Smoke, and am quite fond of the joyous energy all the performers seem to be feeding off of in Blue in the Face.

As a novelist, he was terrific, and it’s funny you mention his preference for the Music Of Chance’s cinematic ending, because another translation of his work - City of Glass’s comic book adaptation by David Mazzucchelli - is masterfully done, and to me, an improvement on something I already thought was impressive!

[Lemmy Caution]

Two of the first 4 or 5 albums I ever owned were ELO. Out of the Blue from 1977. I was 12, presumably influenced by radio play, and think I had asked for it for Xmas.
Also A New World Record (1976), which I think I acquired in 1977. I think those two records were rather Beatlesque, though I was too young to know that, and started off with ELO before I knew the Beatles.

Another of the first 5 was the Rolling Stones compilation Hot Rocks. Plus Cheap Trick live at Budokan. And maybe bought YES, Fragile in 1978.
For a time, mid 70's, ELO were huge.

[brundlefly]

another translation of his work - City of Glass’s comic book adaptation by David Mazzucchelli - is masterfully done, and to me, an improvement on something I already thought was impressive!

Seconded. So strongly, thinkily visualized that it superseded the original for me. I was saddened the Neon Lit series didn't continue, though the two other books (Perdita Durango, Nightmare Alley) were considered such disappointments I never even looked at them. Thankfully Mazzucchelli's City of Glass was recognized enough that it has managed to stay in print.

[hearthesilence]

Two of the first 4 or 5 albums I ever owned were ELO. Out of the Blue from 1977. I was 12, presumably influenced by radio play, and think I had asked for it for Xmas.
Also A New World Record (1976), which I think I acquired in 1977. I think those two records were rather Beatlesque, though I was too young to know that, and started off with ELO before I knew the Beatles.

Another of the first 5 was the Rolling Stones compilation Hot Rocks. Plus Cheap Trick live at Budokan. And maybe bought YES, Fragile in 1978.
For a time, mid 70's, ELO were huge.

I pretty much have those too though with the exception of the Stones who were a favorite early on, I actually looked into Cheap Trick, Yes and especially ELO very late in the game, long after I built up a sizable rock library. (At least for me, Bill Bruford-era Yes like Fragile and early Cheap Trick like Budokan is still the way to go for those two acts.)

I put on Strange Magic yesterday and it's still a fun listen, especially if you whittle it down to just the hit songs (though I still don't like their hit cover of "Roll Over Beethoven"). Comes out to a very tight 80 or 85 minute program.

[colinr0380]

I still have yet to fully sit down with the most recent ELO album, 2019's From Out of Nowhere, but here's One More Time with Richard Tandy performing the piano solo section.

One film that I would love to see at some point is 1977's Joyride, which has a very early (pre-lion mauling!) role for Melanie Griffith but which is apparently impossible to licence for home video release because of its soundtrack being full of wall-to-wall ELO songs.