FOLLOW US ON:
GET THE NEWSLETTER
CONTACT US
Thank God for Satan: Surge in Devil-worship creates demand for Exorcists
03.30.2011
06:23 pm
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
Thank God for Satan, as more than 60 Catholic clergy (66 perhaps?) gather in Rome for a 6-day (another 6!) conference on “Exorcism”, this week, at the Regina Apostolorum Pontifical University, Rome. The event will examine how the web has made it easier than before to access information on Devil-worship and the occult, reports the Daily Telegraph:

“The internet makes it much easier than in the past to find information about Satanism,” said Carlo Climati, a member of the university who specialises in the dangers posed to young people by Satanism.

“In just a few minutes you can contact Satanist groups and research occultism. The conference is not about how to become an exorcist. It’s to share information about exorcism, Satanism and sects. It’s to give help to families and priests. There is a particular risk for young people who are in difficulties or who are emotionally fragile,” said Mr Climati.

Organizers of the event say the rise of Satanism has been dangerously underestimated in recent years.

“There’s been a revival,” said Gabriele Nanni, a former exorcist and another speaker at the course.

Over the course of 6-days, the exorcists will scrutinise the phenomenon of Satanism with “seriousness and scientific rigour”, avoiding a “superficial or sensational approach.”

In theory, any priest can perform an exorcism – a rite involving prayers to drive the Devil out of the person said to be possessed.

But Vatican officials said three years ago that parish priests should call in professional exorcists if they suspect one of their parishioners needs purging of evil. An exorcist should be called when “the moral certainty has been reached that the person is possessed”, said Father Nanni, a member of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints. That could be indicated by radical and disturbing changes in the person’s behaviour and voice, or an ability to garble in foreign languages or nonsensical gibberish.

While the number of genuine cases of possession by the Devil remained relatively small, “we must be on guard because occult and Satanist practices are spreading a great deal, in part with the help of the internet and new technologies that make it easier to access these rituals,” he said.

The Vatican’s chief exorcist claimed last year that the Devil lurked in the Vatican, the very heart of the Catholic Church.

Father Gabriele Amorth said people who are possessed by Satan vomit shards of glass and pieces of iron, scream, dribble and slobber, utter blasphemies and have to be physically restrained.

He claimed that the sex abuse scandals which have engulfed the Church in the US, Ireland, Germany and other countries, were proof that the anti-Christ was waging a war against the Holy See. He said Pope Benedict XVI believed “wholeheartedly” in the practice of exorcism.

The church’s International Association of Exorcists was set up in 1993, and meet in secret every 2 years, with the aim “of increasing the number of official exorcists worldwide.”

Since 2005, Catholic priests can sign up to learn how to cast away evil spirits from the possessed at the Vatican-backed college, the Athenaeum Pontificium Regina Apostolorum in Rome.

It runs a two-month course to teach the “spiritual, liturgical and pastoral work involved in being an exorcist.”

According to Father Giulio Savoldi, Milan’s official exorcist, requirements include “the supernatural force – the presence of God – and then suggest that the man picked to do this kind of work be wise and that he should know how to gather strength not just from within himself but from God.” The Roman Catholic’s new Exorcism RiteThe Roman Catholic’s new Exorcism Rite, which was updated in 1999 for the first time since 1614, stresses the importance of distinguishing who is really in need of an exorcism.

Father Savoldi said: “Those studying to become exorcists should also study psychology and know how to distinguish between a mental illness and a possession. And, finally, they need to be very patient.” He said the priest who undertakes the office should be himself a holy man, of a blameless life, intelligent, courageous, humble. He should avoid in the course of the rite anything resembling superstition and he should leave the medical aspects of the case to qualified physicians.

If that doesn’t turn your head, then you may enjoy Mark Kermode’s fascinating BBC documentary, Fear of God: The Making of ‘The Exorcist’, which examines the story of classic 1973 horror movie, with cast and crew, and discusses the true events inspired William Peter Blatty’s original novel.
 

 
Previously on DM

Exorcists gather in Poland


 
The rest of Mark Kermode’s documentary on the making of ‘The Exorcist’ after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
|
03.30.2011
06:23 pm
|
Back to the future: Douglas Adams’s ‘Hyperland’
03.25.2011
07:29 pm
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
In 1990, Douglas Adams wrote and presented a “fantasy documentary” called Hyperland for the BBC. In it Adams dreamt of a future where he would be able “to play a more active role in the information he chooses to digest.” Adams throws away his TV and is met by:

[a] software agent, Tom (played by Tom Baker), [who] guides Douglas around a multimedia information landscape, examining (then) cuttting-edge research by the SF Multimedia Lab and NASA Ames research center, and encountering hypermedia visionaries such as Vannevar Bush and Ted Nelson. Looking back now, it’s interesting to see how much he got right and how much he didn’t: these days, no one’s heard of the SF Multimedia Lab, and his super-high-tech portrayal of VR in 2005 could be outdone by a modern PC with a 3D card. However, these are just minor niggles when you consider how much more popular the technologies in question have become than anyone could have predicted - for while Douglas was creating Hyperland, a student at CERN in Switzerland was working on a little hypertext project he called the World Wide Web…

Hyperland is an excellent film - prescient, fascinating and greatly entertaining.
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
|
03.25.2011
07:29 pm
|
Ivor Cutler: Looking for the Truth with a Pin
03.09.2011
06:39 pm
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
Ivor Cutler was a poet, humorist, singer/song-writer, and performer, who was, by his own admission, “never knowingly understood.” Born into a Jewish middle-class family, in Glasgow’s south side, Cutler claimed his life was shaped by the birth of younger brother:

“He took my place as the center of the Universe. Without that I would not have been so screwed up as I am and therefore as creative. Without a kid brother I would have been quite dull, I think.”

Being so usurped, the young Cutler attempted to bash his brother’s brains in with a poker. Thankfully, an observant aunt stopped him. As more siblings were born, another brother and two sisters, Cutler’s resentment lessened after he discovered poetry and music. When he was five, he discovered politics after witnessing the bare-foot poverty of his school friends, and aligned himself to the Left thereafter.

After school, he worked at various jobs before he settled as a school teacher, teaching 7-11-year-olds music and poetry. His work with children inspired and reinforced his own unique view of the world:

He recalled how, in an art class, “one boy drew an ass that didn’t have four legs, but 14. I asked him why and he said it looked better that way. I wanted to lift him out of his cage and put my arms around him, but my intellect told me not to, which was lucky, because I probably would have been sent to prison.”

In the 1950s, Cutler started submitting his poetry to magazines and radio, and soon became a favorite on the BBC. His poetry was filled with “childlike wonder of the world”, created through the process of “bypassing the intellect.” He was, by his own account, a “stupid genius,” , as the London Times explained

Such genius derived from his ability to view life from the opposite direction to that taken by society, and his ability to empathise with the implications of that viewpoint, as in his one-sentence poem: “A fly crouching in a sandwich cannot comprehend why it has become more than ordinarily vulnerable.”

Cutler had a cult following of loyal fans, which included John Lennon and Paul McCartney, who cast him in their The Magical Mystery Tour film; DJ John Peel, who devotedly played Cutler’s releases; Morrissey and more recently Alan McGee and Oasis.

Ivor Cutler: Looking for Truth with a Pin was made shortly before Cutler died. The program has contributions from Paul McCartney, Robert Wyatt, Billy Connolly and Alex Kapranos, and is a fitting testament to the great man, who made life so much more fun. More interesting. More mysterious.

Admittedly, he might not be everyones cup of warmth, but as Cutler said himself:

“Those who come to my gigs probably see life as a child would. It’s those who are busy making themselves into grown-ups, avoiding being a child — they’re the ones who don’t enjoy it.”

I hope you enjoy.
 

 
More truth from Mr Cutler’s pin, after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
|
03.09.2011
06:39 pm
|
Tracey Emin - Sex, Success and Celebrity
03.03.2011
06:49 pm
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
Is Tracey Emin any good? That’s the question at the heart of Anne-Claire Pilley’s documentary about the celebrated and controversial artist. Tracey Emin - Sex, Success and Celebrity, which was made to coincide with the 2008 retrospective Tracey Emin: 20 Years, pits two opposing voices against each other: neo-classical sculptor Alexander Stoddart, who claims Emin’s work is “horrendous, exploitative, and insincere,” a mix of “cynicism and sentimentalism”; and Guardian scribe and novelist, Bidisha who believes Emin is “a charisamtic, powerful woman,” who produces “real art work of value and tremendous beauty.”

Emin is a fine subject for this kind of documentary, as she has divided audiences and critics since her first solo exhibition at the White Cube Gallery in 1993, and while many may think the argument over Emin’s talent is redundant, her retrospective, Tracey Emin: 20 Years, proved it was very much alive and kicking. Laura Cumming in the Guardian, wondered whether the show was “self-pity or self-parody”:

Tracey Emin: 20 Years is an assault of a show. There is no escape from the agony. The corridors are lined with images of abuse, betrayal, sickness and abortion, tales from hell retold in embroidered banners and neon. The galleries are crammed with martyr’s relics: hospital tags, bloody plasters, painkillers, failed contraceptives, the famous bed with its stained knickers and stubbed fags - supporting evidence to further jeremiads in prose and video. The soundtracks bleeding from one room to the next alone would make you scream, except that Emin does it for you: at the top of her lungs and naked in Norway, in homage to Edvard Munch.

It has to be a joke, this video, doesn’t it? Emin couldn’t possibly expect us to take this absurd literalism seriously - or could she? This is a question for any visitor to her retrospective. Go round it solemnly by all means (and I never saw so much respectfulness as in Edinburgh), but every now and again ask yourself whether Emin mightn’t actually be sending herself up.

While, Lynne Walker in the Independent said, “Tracey Emin’s work crude and self-centered? That’s missing the point”:

...despite the graphic content of some of the work, the sequence of pictures of women with splayed legs, or the in-your-face curses and more enigmatic phrases on the beautiful and hugely detailed blankets, to dismiss her work as crude or self-centred is to miss the point. That’s just one aspect of Emin. By far the most touching examples of her work are Uncle Colin – the piece that, at least on the day I spoke to her, she would most like to save if all else were to be destroyed. A favourite relative whose sudden death traumatised her is immortalised in text and photos, just as the spirit of her grandmother hovers over the colourful There’s a Lot of Money in Chairs – mainly stuffed down the back of them, in this case. The bird drawings sing off the wall, while one of the most fascinating exhibits involves tiny photographic reproductions of work she destroyed in 1990.

It’s brave of Emin to expose so much of herself over such a long period. A short DVD, Why I Never Became a Dancer, tells a bigger story, while the reproduction, on a smaller scale, of Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made from 1996 is such a personal insight that it provokes wry smiles and even a tear.

Tracey Emin - Sex, Success and Celebrity was made as part of the BBC’s Artworks (which has a ghastly opening title sequence) strand, and includes interviews with Emin, and various contributors, and discussions on Emin’s works including Uncle Colin, Why I Never Became a Dancer, A Conversation with My Mum and It’s Not The Way I Want to Die.

Before you watch, here are 10 facts about Tracey Emin, as found on her website.

1. Tracey Emin might not be the kind of artist your granny would like. Her autobiographical style of work is all about exposing the kind of things about herself that most people would be too ashamed to reveal.
2. Her confessional subjects include abortions, rape, self-neglect and promiscuity, sometimes expressed with the help of gloriously old-fashioned looking, hand-sewn applique letters. Her dad quite likes the sewing, because it reminds him of his own mum.

3. One of her installations, called Everyone I Have Ever Slept with 1963-1995 is a tent, into and onto which she has sewn all these people’s names.

4. Some see poetry in the titles of her work. They include: You Forgot to Kiss My Soul; Every Part of Me Is Bleeding; My Cunt is Wet With Fear; and I Need Art Like I Need God. There is no Still Life With Bowl of Apples, as far as we know.

5. Emin has been accused of cynically exploiting the public’s darkest levels of voyeurism.

6. But her honesty can be disarming. She once told Observer interviewer Lynn Barber that the first thing she did when she started making money was to buy medical insurance, because: “I’m sickly and I get run down and I have very bad herpes, and I like knowing that the doctor’s there.”

7. Emin’s first move into the public eye was opening a shop in London’s Bethnal Green called, er, The Shop, with fellow artist Sarah Lucas. Emin’s stock included letters she’d written and ashtrays with pictures of Damien Hirst’s face stuck to the bottom of them.

8. Emin was the inspiration - if that’s the right word - for a latter day art movement called Stuckism, which is devoted to advancing the cause of painting as the most vital means of addressing contemporary issues. The movement was founded by her ex-boyfriend Billy Childish, to whom she had once said: “Your paintings are stuck, you are stuck! Stuck! Stuck! Stuck!”

9. White Cube curator Jay Jopling spotted her in 1994 and the big time called. She came to wider public attention during a live Channel 4 Turner Prize debate in 1997. A very inebriated Emin mumbled incoherently that “no real people” would be watching and that she wanted to go be with her mum and friends.

10. Two years later, “Mad Tracey from Margate” (her words) was shortlisted for the Turner Prize for an installation entitled My Bed, a testimony to her self-neglect and over-indulgence. She didn’t win, but Charles Saatchi paid £150,000 for it.

 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
|
03.03.2011
06:49 pm
|
‘Cracked Actor’: BBC’s landmark documentary on David Bowie, 1975
02.28.2011
07:32 pm
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
Cracked Actor captured David Bowie at “a fragile stage” in his life. His relationship with his wife, Angie, was beginning to falter, there was business problems looming, and he was addicted to cocaine, which caused “severe physical debilitation, paranoia and emotional problems.” Filmed during Bowie’s legendary “Diamond Dogs Tour” in 1974, Alan Yentob’s film revealed a man on the run, taking stock, even questioning his own ambitions:

‘I never wanted to be a rock ‘n’ roll star. I never, honest guv, I wasn’t even there. But I was, you see, I was there. That’s what happened.’

Revealing his difficulties with fame:

‘Do you know that feeling you get in a car when somebody’s accelerating very fast and you’re not driving? And you get that “Uhhh” thing in your chest when you’re being forced backwards and you think “Uhhh” and you’re not sure whether you like it or not? It’s that kind of feeling. That’s what success was like. The first thrust of being totally unknown to being what seemed to be very quickly known. It was very frightening for me and coping with it was something that I tried to do. And that’s what happened. That was me coping. Some of those albums were me coping, taking it all very seriously I was.’

And the singer’s paranoia, at the time of Watergate and Richard Nixon’s resignation:

‘There’s an underlying unease here, definitely. You can feel it in every avenue and it’s very calm. And it’s a kind of superficial calmness that they’ve developed to underplay the fact that it’s… there’s a lot of high pressure here as it’s a very big entertainment industry area. And you get this feeling of unease with everybody. The first time that it really came home to me what a kind of strange fascination it has is the… we… I came in on the train… on the earthquake, and the earthquake was actually taking place when the train came in. And the hotel that we were in was… just tremored every few minutes. I mean, it was just a revolting feeling. And ever since then I‘ve always been very aware of how dubious a position it is to stay here for any length of time.’

In a series of interviews, filmed in limousines, backstage and in hotel rooms, Cracked Actor reveals an uncertain, vulnerable, and at times incoherent Bowie; but in performance, he is magnificent.

Originally made for the BBC’s arts strand Omnibus, this is a brilliant, mesmeric, landmark documentary, even if Yentob is slightly disparaging of Bowie’s re-invention as “a soul singer.”

Footnote: when film director, Nicholas Roeg watched Cracked Actor, he decided to cast Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth.
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
|
02.28.2011
07:32 pm
|
Simon Schama on the power of Mark Rothko
02.25.2011
07:00 pm
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
The artist Mark Rothko died today on the 25th February 1970. His body was found in his studio by his assistant. He had ingested an overdose of barbiturates and had slashed an artery on his right arm. He lay in a sticky pool of blood, dressed in white long-johns and black socks. Rothko was sixty-six. He had been suffering from depression, and had also been diagnosed with a mild aortic aneurysm.

His death increased the value of his paintings overnight - the price nearly doubled. More interestingly, his death led to legal suit by his children against his gallery and the executors of his estate.

The trial revealed that Rothko’s dealers, the Marlborough Gallery, and his executors had conspired to “waste the assets” and defraud his children out of their rightful share of their father’s estate. It was also found the gallery had deliberately stockpiled and undervalued Rothko’s paintings for years, with the intention of selling them at an increased value after his death. The Marlborough had purchased “one group of 100 paintings for just $1.8million, a sum it would pay over 12 years and with no interest, with a down-payment of only $200,000.” The total assets of 798 paintings were worth a minimum of $32million.

In 1975, the defendants were found liable for “negligence and a conflict of interest”. They were removed as executors of the Rothko estate, by court order, and, together with the Marlborough Gallery, required to pay a $9.2 million damages to the estate. Sounds a lot, but not much when compared to the value Rothko’s paintings have since attained - his 1954 painting, Homage to Matisse sold in 2005 for $22.4million, while his 1950 White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose), sold for a record $72.8 million

Simon Schama’s excellent documentary on Rothko starts off with Schama’s own epiphany when first seeing the artist’s paintings:

“One morning in the spring of 1970, I went into the Tate Gallery and took a wrong, right turn and there they were, lying in wait. No it wasn’t love at first site. Rothko had insisted that the lighting be kept almost pretentiously low. It was like going into the cinema, expectation in the dimness.

Something in there was throbbing steadily, pulsing like the inside of a body part, all crimson and purple. I felt I was being pulled through those black lines to some mysterious place in the universe.

Rothko said his paintings begin an unknown adventure into an unknown space. I wasn’t sure where that was and whether I wanted to go. I only know I had no choice and that the destination might not exactly be a picnic, but I got it all wrong that morning in 1970. I thought a visit to the Seagram Paintings would be like a trip to the cemetary of abstraction - all dutiful reverence, a dead end.

Everything Rothko did to these paintings - the column-like forms suggested rather than drawn and the loose stainings - were all meant to make the surface ambiguous, porous, perhaps softly penetrable. A space that might be where we came from or where we will end up.

They’re not meant to keep us out, but to embrace us; from an artist whose highest compliment was to call you a human being.”

Schama is a cultured story-teller, who has a great enthusiasm for his subject, and he fully appreciates the value of the small tale by which an artist’s life can be apprehended. One particular sequence, highlights the irony of how Rothko, who famously removed his paintings from a swanky Four Seasons restaurant at the Seagram Building, in New York, because:

“Anybody who would eat that kind of food, for that kind of money, will never look at a painting of mine.”

has become the center of such phenomenal financial speculation.
 

 
Previously on DM

Revealed: Caravaggio’s criminal record


Notes towards a portrait of Francis Bacon


 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
|
02.25.2011
07:00 pm
|
Billie Whitelaw’s stunning performance in Samuel Beckett’s ‘Not I’, 1973
02.20.2011
04:52 pm
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
The actress Billie Whitelaw couldn’t imagine what it was like. The theater darkened, apart from a spotlight on Whitelaw’s mouth, as she delivered Samuel Beckett’s babbling stream of consciousness Not I.

It’s one of the most disturbing images in theater: a disembodied mouth, telling its tale “at the speed of thought.” It takes incredible discipline and strength for the actor to perform: the text isn’t easy to learn, its full of difficult instructions, pauses, repetitions and disjointed phrases; add to this the speed of delivery, which means the actor has to learn circular breathing in order to deliver the lines. Jessica Tandy once gave a performance that lasted twenty-four minutes, only to be told by Beckett that she had “ruined” his play. And let’s not forget the rigidity of the piece: the actor’s lack of mobility, the mouth tethered to a spotlight, all of which says everything for Whitelaw’s brilliance as an actor.

Here, Whitelaw introduces Not I in the short documentary, A Wake for Sam, and explains the effect it had on her:

Plenty of writers can write a play about a state of mind, but [Beckett] actually put that state of mind on the stage, in front of your eyes. And I think a lot of people recognized it. I recognized it. When I first read it at home, I just burst in to tears, because I recognized the inner scream. Perhaps that’s not what it is, I don’t know, but for me, that’s what I recognized, an inner scream, in there, and no escaping it.

 

 
Previously on DM

Samuel Beckett speaks


 
With thanks to Tim Lucas
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
|
02.20.2011
04:52 pm
|
Classic Documentary of The Kinks in concert at the Rainbow Theater, 1972
02.18.2011
06:53 pm
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
Here’s an excellent performance-documentary of The Kinks in concert at the Rainbow Theater in London, 1972. It was shot around the time of their classic album Muswell Hillbillies, and the performance footage was originally shown as part of the BBC’s In Concert series.

What makes this program especially wonderful is the way highlights form the concert have been inter-cut with documentary footage with interviews from the band, vox pops, celebrity fan / film and TV producer, the late Ned Sherrin, together with clips from The Virgin Soldiers, and Ray Davies wandering around the disappearing London haunts of his childhood. Tracks include:

“Till the End of the Day”
“Waterloo Sunset”
“Top of the Pops”
“The Money-go-Round”
“Sunny Afternoon”
“She’s Bought a Hat Like Princess Marina”
“Alcohol”
“Acute Schizophrenia Paranoid Blues”
“You Really Got Me”
 

 
Previously on DM

The Kinks Live in Paris, 1965


Stations Enroute to Ray Davies’ Film Masterpiece ‘Return to Waterloo’


 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
|
02.18.2011
06:53 pm
|
Revealed: Caravaggio’s Criminal Record
02.18.2011
04:42 pm
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
He was the bad boy artist whose life inspired film-makers and writers to cast him as a sexual revolutionary or a proto-anarchist of the Renaissance, but the release of his police files suggest the genius painter Caravaggio was more of a gang member with a list of petty crimes and one murder to his name.

An exhibition of documents, at Rome’s State Archives, details Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio’s numerous run-ins with the police, all of which are described in “handwritten police logs, legal and court parchments,” the BBC reports:

The picture the documents paint is that of an irascible man who went about town carrying personal weapons - a sword and dagger, and even a pistol - without a written permit, boasting that he enjoyed the protection of the ecclesiastical authorities who commissioned some of his most famous works.

He had frequent brushes with the police, got into trouble for throwing a plate of cooked artichokes in the face of a waiter in a tavern, and made a hole in the ceiling of his rented studio, so that his huge paintings would fit inside. His landlady sued, so he and a friend pelted her window with stones.

All these events are documented with eyewitness accounts in this collection of yellowing parchments - difficult to decipher for the non-specialist, but rich in contemporary detail for a skilled archivist.

The documents provide a completely new account of his most serious brawl in May 1606 in which he killed a certain Ranuccio Tommassoni. This brawl - just like a modern-day clash between warring gangs - was arranged in advance by eight participants who have all now been named.

Caravaggio and his three companions, one a Captain in the Papal army, met their rivals at a pallacorda court in the Campo Marzio area, where the artist lived. (Pallacorda was a game played with a ball with a string attached - an early form of tennis, which some older Romans still remember seeing played in the streets of the capital in the mid-20th Century.)

Some biographers have suggested that there may have been an argument over a woman, but the text of the court report suggests the quarrel broke out over a gambling debt. Caravaggio killed Ranuccio and fled the city.

One of Caravaggio’s own supporters was seriously injured. Taken to prison, he was subsequently put on trial, and the new evidence emerges from the report of this trial.

Caravaggio himself fled south to Malta and to Sicily where he received important new art commissions. The death sentence from Pope Paul V - whose portrait he had just painted - was imposed in absentia for this offence.

About 17 o’clock [lunchtime] the accused, together with two other people, was eating in the Moor’s restaurant at La Maddalena, where I work as a waiter. I brought them eight cooked artichokes, four cooked in butter and four fried in oil. The accused asked me which were cooked in butter and which fried in oil, and I told him to smell them, which would easily enable him to tell the difference.

He got angry and without saying anything more, grabbed an earthenware dish and hit me on the cheek at the level of my moustache, injuring me slightly… and then he got up and grabbed his friend’s sword which was lying on the table, intending perhaps to strike me with it, but I got up and came here to the police station to make a formal complaint…

The documents also shed light upon Caravaggio’s death at Porto Erole, north of Rome in July 1610. He did not die alone on a beach after escaping from his creditors and the police, as some of his biographers say, but in a hospital bed.

Only 38 years old, he was on his way back to the city from the south in the belief that his powerful friends had secured a pardon for his offences.

The documents that record Caravaggio’s life in Rome are written in a mixture of Latin legal jargon and racy Italian vernacular that any modern Roman could easily understand.

They needed careful restoration, as parts of the parchment were breaking up - the acid in the ink literally devouring the pages.

 
Detail of case against Michelangelo De Caravaggio charged with illegal possession of a sword and a dagger.
image
 
In 2006, Simon Schama’s Power of Art examined Caravaggio‘s life and work through his painting David with the Head of Goliath, as it explained how:

The power of the greatest art is the power to shake us into revelation and rip us from our default mode of seeing. After an encounter with that force, we don’t look at a face, a colour, a sky, a body, in quite the same way again. We get fitted with new sight: in-sight. Visions of beauty or a rush of intense pleasure are part of that process, but so too may be shock, pain, desire, pity, even revulsion. That kind of art seems to have rewired our senses. We apprehend the world differently.

Historian Schama wrote of the great painter:

“In Caravaggio’s time it was believed that artists were given their talent by God to bring beauty to the world and to put mortal creatures in touch with their higher selves or souls. Caravaggio never did anything the way it was supposed to be done.

In this painting of the victory of virtue over evil it’s supposed to be David who is the centre of attention, but have you ever seen a less jubilant victory? On his sword is inscribed “Humilitus Occideit Superbium”, that is, humility conquers pride. This is the battle that has been fought out inside Caravaggio’s head between the two sides of the painter that are portrayed here.

For me the power of Caravaggio’s art is the power of truth, not least about ourselves. If we are ever to hope for redemption we have to begin with the recognition that in all of us the Goliath competes with the David.”

 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
|
02.18.2011
04:42 pm
|
‘Modern Masters Andy Warhol’: BBC documentary on the King of Pop
02.15.2011
11:09 am
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
Modern Masters was a 4-part BBC Arts series first shown in 2010. In each program, Daily Telegraph art critic, Alastair Sooke examined the lives and work of one of the 20th century’s most important artists, Henri Matisse; Pablo Picasso; Salvador Dali and Andy Warhol.

Sooke set out to discover “why these artists are considered so great and how they still influence our lives today,” not exactly an original approach, but hey, it’s the BBC. The series kicked-off with his documentary on Andy Warhol, “the king of Pop Art”, which certainly had great access, and some very fine archive, and while I’m sure Mr. Warhol would have loved it, it is all a bit hit-and-miss and depends on how well you take to Sooke’s approach as a presenter. Andrew Billen in the London Times wrote of the program:

The Warhol era seems so distant that it was a happy surprise that in New York Sooke found so many of Warhol’s contemporaries to interview. In the Serendipity coffee shop where Warhol sold his first paintings, its owner recalled that his favourite drink was frozen ice chocolate and lemon ice box pie (I think he said it was a drink). The nice couple who employed him to design the logo for their leather business said that he always came with five new ideas for marketing campaigns and if they didn’t like them he would come back next day with another they did. Gerard Malagna, master of the Warhol silk screen, Warholed Sooke’s face into a screen print. Sooke said that he looked like a mouse with lipstick. Malagna agreed: it was just so perfect. Sooke even got an audience with a still well Dennis Hopper. Duchamp had said that the artist would end up just pointing his finger and declaring something art. Warhol pointed his finger at us, said Hopper.

Sooke’s answers to his question “What had Warhol ever done for us?” — predicted celebrity culture, found beauty in banality, toppled the idea of the artist as suffering mystic — were less interesting than his tiggerish approach and his willingness to follow Warhol into absurdity. A stylist apparently called Brix Smith-Start, herself a ringer for Warhol, dressed Sooke in an “Andy-suit” and wig. “Gee Brix! Golly!” exclaimed Sooke, pouting into a cheval. “Yes! You’ve so got it,” gasped Brix. And so he had: the whole thing.

 

 
The rest of ‘Modern Masters: Andy Warhol’, after the jump…
 
With thanks to Douglas Steindorff
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
|
02.15.2011
11:09 am
|
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly: 40 years of ‘Top of the Pops’
02.11.2011
09:03 pm
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
When I was growing up in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Top of the Pops was essential, nay compulsory viewing. You see, for a certain age group TOTP was the only music show on British TV. Yes, there was the excellent Old Grey Whistle Test with “Whispering” Bob Harris, which had Zappa, The New York Dolls, Deep Purple and alike, but that went out long after sundown and well past most young uns bedtimes. It would really take until the arrival of the pop promo for music shows to become ubiquitous, which meant back in the days of mop tops, glitter and platform boots, Top of the Pops was King.

Top of the Pops was the BBC’s legendary, Top 40 chart run-down show. It ran between 1964 and 2006, when it was pulled by the Beeb bosses due to a lack of viewers or, too much competition - depending who you read. It was an inevitable demise for music had changed after Rave, and the diversity and choice available meant what most youngsters listened to was rarely reflected by a show centered around the record sales of bland and talentless groups squeezed out by music industry execs.

Moreover, because TOTP was a chart run down show, you were likely to see David Bowie in the same studio as The Osmonds or, The Sex Pistols on the same show as Hot Chocolate. Even so, there was always moments to treasure from Jimi Hendrix, to Bowie’s “Starman”, Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out”, The Smiths with a gladioli-waving Morrissey singing “This Charming Man”, to Blondie “Dreaming”.

And yes, there was The Beatles, The Stones, The Kinks, The Who, The Move and so on, right up to The Damned, The Jam, Marc Almond, and even Nick Cave. But for all the great and the good, there was always a lot of shit. Something that is more than apparent in this 2-hour compilation of forty years of Top of the Pops. It’s an odd mix with some great, and some inexcusable songs, and a lot of brilliant ones missing. Yet, for all the good, the bad and the ugly, it does tell a story of how music has changed for better and worse over the past four decades.

Top of the Pops 40th Anniversary 1964 - 2004

1964: Billy J. Kramer & The Dakotas - “Little Children”
1965: Sandie Shaw - “Long Live Love”
1966: The Seekers - “The Carnival Is Over” (Performance was from 1965)
1967: Procol Harum - “A Whiter Shade of Pale”
1968: The Crazy World of Arthur Brown - “Fire”
1969: The Hollies - “Sorry Suzanne”
1970: Free - “All Right Now”
1971: T.Rex - “Get It On”
1972: Roxy Music - “Virginia Plain”
1973: Slade - “Cum on Feel the Noize”
1974: The Three Degrees - “When Will I See You Again”
1975: Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel - “Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)”
1976: The Real Thing - “You to Me Are Everything”
1977: Queen - “Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy”
1978: The Jam - “Down in the Tube Station at Midnight”
1979: Ian Dury & The Blockheads - “Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick”
1980: Adam and the Ants - “Ant Music”
1981: The Human League - “Don’t You Want Me”
1982: Culture Club - “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?”
1983: UB40 - “Red Red Wine”
1984: Wham! - “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go”
1985: Eurythmics - “There Must Be an Angel (Playing with My Heart)”
1986: Pet Shop Boys - “West End Girls”
1987: Bee Gees - “You Win Again”
1988: Yazz And The Plastic Population - “The Only Way Is Up”
1989: Lisa Stansfield - “All Around the World”
1990: Sinéad O’Connor - “Nothing Compares 2 U”
1991: Seal - “Crazy”
1992: Stereo MCs - “Connected”
1993: New Order - “Regret”
1994: Blur - “Parklife”
1995: Take That - “Back for Good”
1996: Oasis - “Don’t Look Back in Anger”
1997: Spice Girls - “Wannabe”
1998: Manic Street Preachers - “If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next”
1999: Ricky Martin - “Livin La Vida Loca”
2000: Sophie Ellis-Bextor & Spiller - “Groovejet (If This Ain’t Love)”
2001: Texas - “I Don’t Want a Lover”
2002: Status Quo - “Rockin’ All Over The World”
2003: The Darkness - “I Believe in a Thing Called Love”
2004: Michael Andrews Featuring Gary Jules - “Mad World”

 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
|
02.11.2011
09:03 pm
|
Micro Men’s Sinclair Rap
02.08.2011
10:29 am
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
Someone has a lot of time on their hands to produce this rather fun track, which edits choice dialog from Saul Metzstein’s excellent BBC drama Micro Men, into a “Micro Mix”.

Metzstein’s film told the strange, funny story of the rivalry and ambition between two British computer pioneers, Clive Sinclair and Chris Curry. Sinclair (brilliantly played by Alexander Armstrong) devised the ZX80, ZX81 and ZX Spectrum and wanted to bring home computing to all, but lost out to rival inventor Chris Curry (Martin Freeman in the film), who co-founded Acorn Computers.

The rivalry comes to a head when the BBC announce their Computer Literacy Project, with the stated aim of putting a micro in every school in Britain. When Acorn wins the contract, Sinclair is furious, and determines to outsell the BBC Micro with his ZX Spectrum computer.

Sinclair went on to produce the Sinclair C5, a single occupancy battery-powered motor vehicle, which was a commercial disaster.

There are clips from Micro Men scattered over the web, and if you haven’t already, it is a drama well worth seeing.

Saul Metzstein is a talented and intelligent director, the kind Hollywood should hire more often. His last film was the award-winning Guy X, while his first Late Night Shopping is a firm cult favorite.
 

 
More from ‘Micro Men’ plus bonus Sinclair’s ZX Spectrum ad, after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
|
02.08.2011
10:29 am
|
Why you should never do a live News broadcast from a bar
01.31.2011
10:34 am
Topics:
Tags:

 
Oh dear, I wonder who thought this was a good idea? BBC Scotland News presented a live link-up to a bar, in tennis player Andy Murray’s hometown of Dunblane, after Murray had lost in the Australian Open final.

This little vignette confirms a lot of Scottish stereotypes in one go, and explains why TV News should never do live link-ups from bars.
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
|
01.31.2011
10:34 am
|
Pan’s People: Top of the Pops’ legendary dance troupe
01.31.2011
09:49 am
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
Back in the day before pop promos, the BBC’s chart show, Top of the Pops employed dance troupe Pan’s People to fill-in for those artists who couldn’t appear on the show.

Pan’s People were the legendary dance goddesses of the 1960s and ‘70s, who are still worshipped by the writers of Lad’s Mags, and by the over-familiar contributors to self-congratulatory pop culture list shows, like I Love the 70s. And less we forget, Pan’s People were also responsible for convincing many a middle-aged dad, in the 1970s, that pop music wasn’t the devil’s plaything.

Pan’s People made their first appearance on TOTP in April 1968, replacing The Go-Jos, the original trio of dancers who had graced the chart show with their interpretative dancing since 1964. BBC bosses decided a change was needed and cast Louise Clarke, Felicity “Flick” Colby, Barbara “Babs” Lord, Ruth Pearson, Andrea “Andi” Rutherford and Patricia “Dee Dee” Wilde as Pan’s People:

London born Louise Clarke had attended the Corona Stage School where she did child modelling work and was also chosen for some minor roles in films and television.

Ruth Pearson also attended the Corona Stage School. She originally came from Kingston in Surrey and at the age of seven won a place at the Ballet Rambert.

Wolverhampton born Babs Lord began dancing an early age and after initially taking lessons at her mother’s dance school, she later attended the Arts Educational Trust stage school. At the age of eighteen Babs joined a group of young dancers called The Beat Girls and made weekly appearances on BBC2’s music show The Beat Room. Babs later appeared with The Beat Girls in the 1965 British film Gonks Go Beat.

Originally from Farnham in Surrey, Dee Dee Wilde had arrived back on British shores a few years earlier, aged seventeen, after spending most of her childhood in Africa. Prior to joining Pan’s People, Dee Dee enjoyed a stint with another dance troupe that included a tour of Spain.

American Flick Colby came from New York and originally trained as a ballet dancer. Within months of arriving in Britain in 1966 Flick, together with Andrea Rutherford and the four other girls, had formed Pan’s People. The fact that Flick also handled the group’s choreography ensured that Pan’s People remained a pretty much self-contained unit of strong-willed young women who were hungry for a little success.

During the next eighteen months Pan’s People only appeared a few times on British television, but they had more success in Amsterdam with a spot on a Dutch TV series. They got their lucky break in 1968 when the BBC finally decided to sign them up as TOTP’s new dancers. Initially Pan’s People made only semi-regular appearances on the show, perhaps once or twice a month. However, it soon became clear that Pan’s People were proving a huge hit with viewers. So by 1969 the girls were dancing on the TOTP every week and were now an integral part of the show.

As the new chart run-down was released on a Tuesday and TOTP went out on a Thursday, Pan’s People only had 24-hours in which to choose a song, work out their moves, and learn their routine. The tremendous pressure led Flick Colby to quit in 1971, and focus solely on the troupe’s choreography. Pan’s People thereafter remained a 5-piece until Louise left to start a family (Pan’s People were allegedly banned by the Beeb from getting married) and was replaced by 17-year-old Cherry Gillespie in December 1972, who was presented to the group as a Christmas present. Very enlightened.

After Pan’s People split in 1976, Flick remained choreographer for TOTP and created the shows dance groups Ruby Flipper, Legs and Co. and Zoo. Only Legs and Co. was successful out of these. Flick’s style was often criticized as far too literal (most notably in Pan’s People’s version of Gilbert O’Sullivan’s “Get Down” - see below), but it fitted with the times and she did create the group’s very recognizable dance language:

By the mid 1970s Pan’s People had almost invented their own sign language to accompany song lyrics (now commonly referred to as ‘Pan Speak’).

For example:

“You” - Index finger pointing towards the camera.
“Stop”- Arm half outstretched with palm facing camera - like a policeman halting traffic.
“Love” - Both hands held over heart.
“Think”- Index finger pointing towards temple with a ‘thinking’ facial expression. Head cocked at 30° angle towards finger.
“Know” - Index finger pointing towards temple with a ‘smiling’ facial expression. Head cocked at 30° angle away from finger.
“I” or “Me” - Index finger pointing towards oneself.
“Don’t” - Index finger pointing upwards about 30cm in front of face, then move forearm in a windscreen wiper motion. Half smiling, half chastising facial expression.
“No” - Arms crossed just in front of chest with hands at neck level, palms facing outwards. Now uncross your arms until they are vertical, palms still facing outwards. Same facial expression as with “Don’t”.

Here are a few moments of Pop Heaven from Pan’s People, firstly their short film interpretation of John Barry’s “Theme from The Persuaders”, then the classic dog dancing to Gilbert O’Sullivan, ‘a best of’ and The Chi-Lites’ “Homely Girl”. Enjoy.
 

 
Previously on DM

Legs and Co. meet Lalo Schifrin


Interpretive dance to AC/DC’s ‘TNT’


 
Bonus clips of Pan’s People getting their groove on, after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
|
01.31.2011
09:49 am
|
‘Fawlty Towers’, the greatest sitcom ever, now a 3-course dining experience
01.25.2011
06:46 pm
Topics:
Tags:

image
 
It’s well known that comedy genius John Cleese was inspired to write the classic sit-com Fawlty Towers after he and his fellow Pythons stayed at the Gleneagles Hotel in Torquay, England, during the filming of the series Monty Python’s Flying Circus. It was here Cleese met the man who inspired Basil Fawlty:

The “wonderfully rude” hotel owner (Donald Sinclair) endeared himself to the Monty Python team by throwing Eric Idle’s briefcase out of the hotel “in case it contained a bomb,” complaining about Terry Gilliam’s table manners, and chucking a bus timetable at another guest after the guest dared to ask the time of the next bus to town.

“He seemed to view us as a colossal inconvenience right from the start.” — Michael Palin on Donald Sinclair.

Another Python, Graham Chapman, described Mr Sinclair as —“completely round the twist, off his chump, out of his tree.”

Little did this hotelier realise that John Cleese was making mental notes of all this madcap behaviour and he might well have seen himself a few years later on TV, transformed into Basil Fawlty—the most infamous British hotelier ever—broadcast to the British nation and ultimately most of the world! Donald Sinclair died in 1981, apparently he emigrated to Florida in the 1970s where he was once tracked down by a British newspaper after Cleese unfortunately named him in an interview. Mr Sinclair and his relatives have never been too happy about the way he has been portrayed!

Recently, Cleese revealed the BBC originally thought the idea for Fawlty Towers was “dire”, as producers couldn’t see the value in the show.

“There is a famous note which I have a copy of, I think it’s framed. What happened was, Connie and I wrote that first episode and we sent it in to Jimmy Gilbert (Head of Comedy at the BBC). And first of all the fellow whose job it was to assess the quality of the writing said, and I can quote it fairly accurately, ‘This is full of cliched situations and stereotypical characters and I cannot see it as being anything other than a disaster’.

“And Jimmy himself said ‘You’re going to have to get them out of the hotel, John, you can’t do the whole thing in the hotel’.

“Whereas, of course, it’s in the hotel that the whole pressure cooker builds up.”

Thankfully Cleese and Booth were proved right; though it was still hard graft, as each script took six weeks to write and Cleese had to subsidize his writing time with Connie Booth by appearing in adverts:

“I have to thank the advertising industry for making this possible. Connie and I used to spend six weeks writing each episode and we didn’t make a lot of money out of it.

“This will amuse you but in 1975 when I did Fawlty Towers for the first time we made six shows. Well, it took six weeks to make each show, so that’s 36 weeks, one week to film them - 37 weeks - and six weeks to actually tape them in the studio so that’s 43 weeks’ work, for which I was paid for writing and performing and filming, £6,000.

“So that meant that I was able to subsidise my writing time by doing commercials. If it hadn’t been for the commercials, I wouldn’t have been able to afford to spend so much time on the script.”

Fawlty Towers is rightly recognized as one of the greatest sit-coms ever made, and one whose story has now gone full-cycle as the Hadley Park House Hotel, in Telford, England, is offering a Faulty Towers dining experience next month between 17-19 February, as the Australian Sunday Mercury explains”

Midland hotel is promising guests the dinner from hell next month. Diners will enjoy poor service, a goose-stepping maitre d’, a bungling Spanish waiter and a Waldorf salad – without the Waldorf. And if it all sounds like Fawlty Towers, then that’s because it is.

Faulty Towers: The Dining Experience – misnamed after John Cleese’s classic comedy series – will be entertaining guests at the Hadley Park Hotel in Telford for a couple of nights.

Diners will come face-to-face with Basil Fawlty, his shrieking wife Sybil and hapless waiter Manuel. The three-course meal, promise organisers, will be carnage rather than cordon bleu.

The interactive experience involves characters made famous in the hit BBC show moving amongst the tables, treating people as if they are guests of the Fawlty Towers restaurant.

The original programme was screened in the 1970s and starred John Cleese as Basil, Prunella Scales as Sybil and Andrew Sachs as Manuel. Only two series were made, but it remains one of Britain’s most popular comedies.

The show spawned famous catchphrases such as “Don’t mention the war!”, Sybil’s shriek “Basil!” and Manuel’s imploring “Que?”

Faulty Towers: The Dining Experience was created in 1997 by the Interactive Theatre Australia, which is based in Brisbane. It has received rave reviews all over the world.

Karen Hamilton, 46, who plays Sybil in the show, said: “It’s a really fun show which is only one third scripted. The rest of the time we work off the diners and each other.

“We will say things to them, or encourage them to take part in the play. One person even came along dressed as the Queen because she’d heard about what we do.

“Of course we never left her alone that night. I think she might have regretted it.”

However, not everyone knows what to expect. Karen, who has worked on the show for 11 years, added: “Some guests who come along are really surprised that we are standing right next to them. They expect a stage where we should be performing.

“We tend to ease them into it by wandering in one at a time. Then we get into the swing of things.

“The British crowd are great and they understand implied humour. They link things up very quickly, although they can sometimes be a little reserved.”

Karen and the rest of the cast spend hours studying their characters by re-watching DVDs of the show.
“We want to make sure that we get all the mannerisms just right,” she added. “I’m Australian but I do Sybil’s English accent very well. The only trouble is that whenever I do an English accent now, I sound like Sybil.”

If you’re in the UK and fancy a Faulty Towers night out then check details here.

John Cleese talks about the background to Fawlty Towers on the Guardian website, which can be viewed here.
 

 
More from ‘Fawlty Towers’ and bonus John Cleese interviews, after the jump…
 
With thanks to Tara McGinley
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
|
01.25.2011
06:46 pm
|
Page 3 of 5  < 1 2 3 4 5 >