For their new exhibit at the White Cube gallery in London, controversial British artists Jake and Dinos Chapman worked isolated from each other in separate studios. They only became aware of what the other brother had done when their “collaboration” got staged:
Since their work featured in both YBA exhibitions in the mid-nineties the Chapman brothers - Jake and Dinos - have become synonymous with controversial art, often having their work labelled as vulgar and offensive. But despite the labels and occasional spats with the press the Chapman brothers have been hugely important to British art and were nominated for the Turner prize in 2003. Here, Crane.tv talk to the brothers about their latest exhibition at the White Cube gallery, which for the first time they worked separately on, and finds out their message for fellow YBA Tracey Emin.
The White Cube show runs until September 17, 48 Hoxton Square, London, N1 6PB and 25-26 Mason’s Yard, London, SW1Y 6BU
Three reels of Alfred Hitchcock’s earliest surviving feature film, 1924’s The White Shadow have been found by archivists working in New Zealand. Hitchcock, then just 24-years-old was the assistant director, art director, editor, and wrote the film, which which starred actress Betty Compton as twins, one good and, you guessed it, one who is evil. Although incomplete, the film offers a glimpse at the great director’s budding vision.
For The White Shadow, an atmospheric British melodrama picked up for international distribution by Hollywood’s Lewis J. Selznick Enterprises, Hitchcock is credited as assistant director, art director, editor and writer. He was 24 when he worked on the film; his feature directorial debut would come soon afterward on The Pleasure Garden (1925).
The film, which stars Betty Compson in a dual role as twin sisters — one angelic and the other “without a soul” — turned up among the cache of unidentified American nitrate prints safeguarded at the New Zealand Film Archive in Wellington. The first three reels of the six-reel feature were found; no other copy is known to exist.
“These first three reels of The White Shadow — more than half the film — offer a priceless opportunity to study [Hitchcock’s] visual and narrative ideas when they were first taking shape,” said David Sterritt, chairman of the National Society of Film Critics and author of The Films of Alfred Hitchcock.
The White Shadow was one of several silent films saved by New Zealand film collector Jack Murtagh, who died in 1989. There will be an announcement this week about a U.S. screening. Some of Hitchock’s silent films (The Lodger, The Ring, Blackmail and The Pleasure Garden) are getting new scores in preparation for a BFI retrospective in London that will a part of the Cultural Olympiad festival next summer.
Flickr user Poletti pays homage to some of the most beautiful women from Star Trek. The Galactically Hot Women of Star Trek photostream features the female beauties with the name of the characters, what episodes they appeared in and their real-life names. Besides all the gorgeous faces, the intergalactic 60s fashion and make-up are added bonuses.
This episode of Fault Lines just aired on Al Jazeera English on August 2, 2011. The view from outside the USA seems pretty clear and it isn’t something we should be proud of. Al Jazeera’s approach to the news puts our own media to shame - no hyperactive talking heads, no buzzwords and double-speak, no melodrama and hysteria This may be the only decent news source on the American airwaves. Ironic, isn’t it?
The richest 1% of US Americans earn nearly a quarter of the country’s income and control an astonishing 40% of its wealth. Inequality in the US is more extreme than it’s been in almost a century — and the gap between the super rich and the poor and middle class people has widened drastically over the last 30 years.
This is footage from French TV show Tous En Scene of Led Zeppelin performing at the Theatre Olympia in Paris on June 19, 1969.
Footage from this telecast has been available on Youtube in mostly low quality uploads for awhile now, but this clip is exceptionally nice. There’s a bit of rehearsal footage at the end.
The demented doll freaks at Creepy-Ass Dolls have just published a book of photographs of demonic porcelain and plastic playthings for degenerate kids and twisted adults. You can buy a copy here.
A sample of the horrors lurking among the dark shadows in the doll houses of hell:
The Queen is a fascinating document of a drag beauty contest held in 1967, the lead-up to the pageant and the backstage goings on. It’s a little-known film that is still hard to find on torrent trackers and has been out of print for many years.
The “Miss All-American Camp Beauty Pageant” was shot with hand-held cameras by director Frank Simon (who later produced the Marc Bolan concert film Born to Boogie). The year was 1967. Before the Stonewall riots. A time when cross-dressing could have gotten you arrested for vice, even in New York City. The film provides an interesting look at an event which was simultaneously rather risqué and underground, and at the same time served as a fundraiser for Muscular Dystrophy, co-chaired by Jerry Lewis and Lady Bird Johnson!
Artists Jim Dine and Larry Rivers, writers Bruce Jay Friedman, Terry Southern and George Plimpton, photographer Mary Ellen Mark, Warhol superstars Mario Montez and Edie Sedgwick, and Andy Warhol himself were among the judges of the event, although they are glimpsed very fleetingly in the film (Bobby Kennedy dropped out when he realized what he’d been signed up for).
But these luminaries of that era aren’t the main attraction here, that distinction would go to the hostess, “Flawless Sabrina” (Jack Doroshaw), contestant “Rachel Harlow” (aka Richard Finnochio, who Larry Rivers and allegedly also Warren Beatty hit on) and the film’s equivalent to Snookie, snarling, pissed-off Crystal LaBeija who reads everyone within earshot to filth when she suspects the contest has been fixed in favor of the Caucasian Harlow. As LaBeija went on to be the first “house mother” of the voguing clan House of LaBeija, this scene might well have captured a pivotal moment that led—not indirectly, either—to the Harlem voguing balls celebrated in Paris is Burning a few years later (In other words, the Harlem balls were a reaction to the perceived white-bias of the 1967 contest).
There’s not a lot I could find about The Queen to point you towards except for quite a few information rich pages from Trippin’ with Terry Southern: What I Think I Remember, Gail Gerber’s memoirs. Read from pages 81 to 84.
Below, Crystal LaBeija’s legendary “reading” session from The Queen:”
A video montage from The Queen set to the sounds of “What Makes a Man a Man?” by Charles Aznavour.
It’s true that you can’t judge a book by its cover. In the case of Harpo’s Horrible Secret, you might jump to the conclusion that something untoward was happening, but Harpo’s horrible secret is really that his pap-pap has Alzheimer’s disease, not a pocket full of Viagra.
Before he struck mass market appeal as Sherlock Holmes, Benedict Cumberbatch proved his exceptional talents as Stephen Hawking in this classy BBC film from 2004. Written by Peter Moffatt, and directed by Philip Martin, Hawking tells the story of the scientist’s early years at university, examining his relationships, his work and the onset of the motor neurone disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
Cumberbatch is wonderfully supported by John Sessions, Lisa Dillon and Peter Firth as a grumpy Sir Fred Hoyle, the renowned scientist and author of the classic sci-fi work The Black Cloud.
