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here is one of jerry reed's songs that i like to play REAL LOUD !
i can almost 'smell' it !
(from : 60 years of country music")
hbg

Artist/Band: Reed Jerry
Lyrics for Song: When You're Hot, You're Hot
Lyrics for Album: Jerry Reed

Well me and Homer Jones and Big John Talley
Had a big crap game goin' back in the alley
And I kept rollin' them sevens, winnin' all them pots
My luck was so good I could do no wrong
I jest kept on rollin' and controllin' them bones
And finally they jest threw up their hands and said
"When you hot, you hot"
I said "Yeah?"

When you're hot, you're hot
And when you're not, you're not
Put all the money in and let's roll 'em again
When you're hot, you're hot
(La la la la la la la) (La la la la la)
(La la la la la la la, when you're hot, you're hot)

Well, now every time I rolled them dice I'd win
And I was just gettin' ready to roll 'em again
When I heard somethin' behind me
I turned around and there was a big old cop
He said "Hello, boys" and then he gave us a grin 'n' said
"Look like I'm gonna hafta haul you all in
And keep all that money for evidence"
I said, "Well, son when you hot, you hot"
He said "Yeah"

When you're hot, you're hot
And when you're not, you're not
You can 'splain it all down at City Hall
I say, yeah, when you're hot, you're hot
You're hot
(La la la la la la la) (La la la la la)
(La la la la la la la, when you're hot, you're hot)

Well, when he took us inta court I couldn't believe my eyes
The judge was a fishin' buddy that I recognized
I said "Hey, judge, old buddy, old pal"
"I'll pay ya that hundred I owe ya if you'll get me outta this spot"
So he gave my friends a little fine to pay
He turned around and grinned at me and said
"Ninety days, Jerry, when you hot, you hot"
'N' I said "Thanks a lot"

When you're hot, you're hot
And when you're not, you're not
He let my friends go free and throwed the book at me
He said "Well, when you're hot, you're hot"

I said, "Well I'll tell ya one thing judge, old buddy, old pal
If you wasn't wearin' that black robe I'd take out in back of this courthouse
And I'd try a little bit of your honor on
You understand that, you hillbilly?
Who gonna collect my welfare?"
(When you're hot, you're hot)
"Pay for my Cadillac?
Whadda you mean 'contempt of court'?"
(When you're hot, you're hot)
"Judge"

here is another fine song from that old lp-set , sung by
the 'son of the pioneers'.
hbg

Artist/Band: Sons Of The Pioneers
Lyrics for Song: Cool Water
Lyrics for Album: Rca Country Legends

All day I face the barren waste without the taste of water,
Cool water.
Old Dan and I with throats burned dry and souls that cry for water,
Cool water.

The night are cool and I'm a fool each stars a pool of water,
Cool water.
But with the dawn I'll wake and yawn and carry on to water,
Cool water.

(Chorus)
Keep a movin' Dan, don't you listen to him Dan, he's a devil not a man
and he spreads the burnin' sand with water.
Dan can't you see that big green tree where the waters runnin' free
and it's waiting there for me and you.
Water, cool water.

The shadows sway and seem to say tonight we pray for water,
Cool water.
And way up there He'll hear our prayer and show us where there's water,
Cool Water.

Dan's feet are sore he's yearning for just one thing more than water,
Cool water.
Like me, I guess, he'd like to rest where there's no quest for water,
Cool water.

My word, hamburger. I know that song, but all I remembered was the title. What a winner, Canada.

So, folks. I went on a search and found Amos Moses:

Song title Jerry Reed
Artist Amos Moses

Yeah here comes Amos
Now Amos Moses was a Cajun
He lived by himself in the swamp
He hunted alligator for a living
He'd just knock them in the head with a stump
The Louisiana law gonna get you Amos
It ain't legal hunting alligator down in the swamp boy

Now everyone blamed his old man
For making him mean as a snake
When Amos Moses was a boy
His daddy would use him for alligator bait
Tie a rope around his neck and throw him in the swamp
Alligator man in the Louisiana bayou
About forty-five minutes south of Tippitoe Louisiana
Lived a man called Dr. Mills South and his pretty wife Hannah
They raised up a son who could eat his weight in groceries
Named him after a man of the cloth
Called him Amos Moses

Now the folks around south Louisiana
Said Amos was a hell of a man
He could trap the biggest meanest alligator
And he'd just use one hand
That's all he got left cause an alligator bit it
Left arm gone clear up to the elbow

Well the sheriff caught wind that Amos was up in the swamp
Trading alligator skins
So he snuck in the swamp gonna get the boy
But he never came out
Well I wonder where the Louisiana sheriff went to
Well you can sure get lost in the Louisiana bayou
About forty-five minutes south of Tippitoe Louisiana
Lived a cat named Dr. Mills South and his pretty wife Hannah
They raised up a son who could eat his weight in groceries
Named him after a man of the cloth
Called him Amos Moses

I know son
Make it count son
About forty-five minutes south of Tippitoe Louisiana...

letty : i very much enjoy cajun music , but we only get it from NPR from across the border occasionally . it seems to have been forgotten in canada - even though the "cajuns" were originally "acadians" - mostly from nova scotia and new brunswick .
"Laissez les bon temps rouler (Let the good times roll)! "
hbg
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LE TWO-STEP DE MARKSVILLE

by Bruce Daigrepont
(Bayou Pon Pon, ASCAP)
from Stir up the Roux on Rounder Records (#6016)

LE TWO-STEP DE MARKSVILLE


La roue des wagons cher a Marc Eliche
A casse longtemps passe.
Il a reste, cher, il a trouve
La belle ville de cher Marksville.

On est tous cousins,cher, on est tous cousines,
On est tous voisins, on est tous voisines.
Le bons Cadjin, cher, les bonnes Cadjines,
La vie est belle, dans les Avoyelles.

On est tous cousins,cher, on est tous cousines,
On est tous voisins, on est tous voisines.
Le bons Cadjin, cher, les bonnes Cadjines,
La vie est belle, dans les Avoyelles.

La roue des wagons cher a Marc Eliche
A casse longtemps passe.
Il a reste, cher, il a trouve
La belle ville de cher Marksville.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE MARKSVILLE TWO STEP


The wagon wheel of Marc Eliche
Broke a long time ago
He stayed, he found
The beautiful city of Marksville.

We're all cousins (men), we're all cousins (women)
We're all neighbors (men), we're all neighbors (women)
The good Cajun (men), the good Cajun (women)
Life is beautiful, in Avoyelles

We're all cousins (men), we're all cousins (women)
We're all neighbors (men), we're all neighbors (women)
The good Cajun (men), the good Cajun (women)
Life is beautiful, in Avoyelles

The wagon wheel of Marc Eliche
Broke a long time ago
He stayed, he found
The beautiful city of Marksville.

My goodness, hamburger. Of course you love cajun music. Didn't they originally come from Grand Pre? Love that song with it's translation, buddy.

I looked at your "Cool Water" and got thirsty. <smile> Often, a mirage and fata morgana are the same.



My mom love this one, folks, but who is the Element of Crime?

Element Of Crime

Tumbling Tumbleweed

See them tumbling down
Pledging their love to the ground
Lonely but free I'll be found
Drifting along with the tumbling tumble weed
Cares of the past are behind
Nowhere to go but I'll find
Just were the trail will wind
Drifting along with the tumbling tumble weed
I know when night has gone
That a new world's born at dawn
I'll keep rolling along
Deep in my heart is a song
Here on the range I belong
Drifting along with the tumbling tumble weed
I know when night has gone
That a new world's born at dawn
I'll keep rolling along
Deep in my heart is a song
Here on the range I belong
Drifting along with the tumbling tumble weed

story of the cajuns :

Cajuns
Cajuns are the descendants of exiles from the French colony of ACADIA (present-day Nova Scotia and adjacent areas) who left their homeland in 1755 and found refuge in southern Louisiana a decade later. By 1790 about 4,000 Acadians occupied the wetlands along Bayou Lafourche and Bayou Teche; they later settled the Louisiana prairies. In the fertile bayous they fished, trapped the fur-bearing animals, gathered moss, and raised sugarcane, cotton, and corn; on the prairies they established cattle ranches and planted rice. Their traditional domestic architecture consisted of daubed or half-timbered houses with gable roofs, mud chimneys, and outside stairways leading to attics. The landholdings were often surrounded by the characteristic pieux, a rail-and-post fence.

The French-speaking, Roman Catholic Cajuns, today estimated to number about 500,000, maintain many cultural and occupational traditions of their ancestors. Their speech is an archaic form of French into which are incorporated words taken from English, German, Spanish, and various Indian languages. With the decline of the muskrat in the wetlands, the nutria, an import from Argentina, became the Cajun trapper's staple. Oystering and shrimping are increasingly important industries. Recently, the exploratory drilling for oil in the wetlands and adjacent offshore areas has provided the Cajuns with another source of employment.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
the sad story is that the acadians did not leave of their own free will .
their farms and posessions were seized , and they were put on boats that took them down the atlantic coast , and dropping off many of them in what became louisiana .
they sure did not forget their music and their humour though .
we met some acadian families in prince-edward island/canada .
their ancestors hid in the woods when the 'red-coats' were looking for them . they are truly hospitable and joyful people .
hbg

hbg, I know all about that, dear. One of my favorite narrative poems is by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow who wrote "Evangeline". He explained quite poetically, the result of that forced removal of a wonderful people.

"...This is the forest primeval...."

Well, folks, we learn and share a lot of information on our small cyber radio.

This is Canada night, listeners, and it makes me feel good about the world.

I love Bliss Carmen's "Vagabond Song", but I found this one that is haunting, especially when I can hear the sea and see the moon.

LOW TIDE ON GRAND PRÉ

THE sun goes down, and over all
These barren reaches by the tide
Such unelusive glories fall,
I almost dream they yet will bide
Until the coming of the tide.

And yet I know that not for us,
By any ecstasy of dream,
He lingers to keep luminous
A little while the grievous stream,
Which frets, uncomforted of dream?-

A grievous stream, that to and fro
Athrough the fields of Acadie
Goes wandering, as if to know
Why one beloved face should be
So long from home and Acadie.

Was it a year or lives ago
We took the grasses in our hands,
And caught the summer flying low
Over the waving meadow lands,
And held it there between our hands?

The while the river at our feet?-
A drowsy inland meadow stream?-
At set of sun the after-heat
Made running gold, and in the gleam
We freed our birch upon the stream.
There down along the elms at dusk
We lifted dripping blade to drift,
Through twilight scented fine like musk,
Where night and gloom awhile uplift,
Nor sunder soul and soul adrift.

And that we took into our hands
Spirit of life or subtler thing?-
Breathed on us there, and loosed the bands
Of death, and taught us, whispering,
The secret of some wonder-thing.

Then all your face grew light, and seemed
To hold the shadow of the sun;
The evening faltered, and I deemed
That time was ripe, and years had done
Their wheeling underneath the sun.

So all desire and all regret,
And fear and memory, were naught;
One to remember or forget
The keen delight our hands had caught;
Morrow and yesterday were naught.

The night has fallen, and the tide…
Now and again comes drifting home,
Across these aching barrens wide,
A sigh like driven wind or foam:
In grief the flood is bursting home.

letty :
thanks for your declaration of "canada night" !
a true 'canajun' is going to try and woo all listeners of this station .
hbg



"stompin tom's - gumboot cloggeroo"

Oh we sailed away at the break of day to pull traps in oilskin trousers-
On the "Susie Jack" but tonite we're back wit a tousand pounds a lobsters-
Oh Shanty town we're gonna tear ya down we got the money comin out a me stockins
Tonite I'm due to bushwack Sue-and take'er to the gumboot clogeroo
And We'll do a little gumboot cloggin-do a little gumboot cloggin-do a little gumboot cloggin-

There's fishin brews and a Cold Hog stew and a boeee-owl of Clam Chowder-
Just see me reach for dat Newfie Screech when they diddle up the fiddle jig louder-
Hear the French girls sing and da geetars ring and the squeeze box squeetity squawkin-
Me and my Sue gonna Whoop de do take er to da Gumboot Clogeroo
And we'll do a little gumboot cloggin-do a little gumboot cloggin

There's Boots Benard and the rock richard's and the girls from way down Crackidee!
How many Blue Noser's and Herring Chokers we just don't know exactly-
Pack em all in tight and we'll dance all night get the old barn floor just a rockin
Buy a ring dang do for PEI Sue & take 'er to the gumboot Clogeroo
And we'll do a little gumboot cloggin-do a little gumboot cloggin...

Oh We sailed away at the break of day to pull traps in oilskin trousers
On the Susie Jack , but tonight Were back wit a tousand pounds o' lobsters-
Oh shanty town we're gonna tear ya down We got the money comin outa me stockins
Tonite I'm due to bushwack Sue and take er to the gumboot cloggeroo
And We'll do a little gumboot cloggin-

There's fishin brew and a coldhog stew and a boweeeol o clam chowder...
Just see me reach for that Newfie Screech and we'll diddle up the fiddle jig louder-
Hear the French girls sing and the guitars ring and the squeezebox squeetity squackin
Me and my sue gonna whoop de do-take er to a gumboot cloggeroo
Gonna do a little gumboot cloggin-do a little gumboot Cloggin -repeat, end

can't be canada night without some gordon lightfoot

Did She Mention My Name
Gordon Lightfoot

It's so nice to meet an old friend and pass the time of day
And talk about the home town a million miles away
Is the ice still on the river, are the old folks still the same
And by the way, did she mention my name
Did she mention my name just in passing
And when the morning came, do you remember if she dropped a name or two
Is the home team still on fire, do they still win all the games
And by the way, did she mention my name

Is the landlord still a loser, do his signs hang in the hall
Are the young girls still as pretty in the city in the fall
Does the laughter on their faces still put the sun to shame
And by the way, did she mention my name

Did she mention my name just in passing
And when the talk ran high, did the look in her eye seem far away
Is the old roof still leaking when the late snow turns to rain
And by the way, did she mention my name

Did she mention my name just in passing
And looking at the rain, do you remember if she dropped a name or two
Won't you say hello from someone, they'll be no need to explain
And by the way, did she mention my name

Love it! dj and hamburger. Detano had a great list of songs and I recall full well the rather bawdy lyrics to "It's a Long Way to Tipperary", but instead, I think that I will play a little Danny Kaye who did them all:

For my goodnight song:

Lullabye in Ragtime

Won't you play the music so the cradle can rock
To a lullabye in ragtime
Sleepy hands are creeping to the end of the clock
Play a lullabye in ragtime
You can tell the sandman is on his way
By the way that they play
As still as the trill of a thrush
In a twilight hush
So you can hear
The rythym of the river on the side of the boat
As you sail away to dreamland
High above the moon you hear a silvery note
As the sand man takes your hand
So rock-a-bye my baby
Don't you cry my baby
Sleepy time is nigh
So won't you rock me to a ragtime lullabye



Goodnight, time to call it a day
Sleep tight, dream your troubles away
Goodnight, in spite of any sorrow
There's a brand new day on it's way tomorrow
Someday, all your dreams will come true
Someway, for me and you
So close your eyes and dream of it my darling
Till then goodnight, goodnight, sleep tight

From Letty with love

a fun song from canadian folk singer bob snider

A Normal Day/Arch Support Blues

Well I'm standing outside of a rock and roll bar
trying to make money on my old guitar
trying to get goin' but I ain't gettin' far
singing the blues away.

Thinking of the one that I had a lotta fun with
some time ago.
God knows when I'm gonna find another friend
in all of this ebb and flow.

O! The friendly bartender's on a double shift.
I'm in the middle of a one man riff.
If singing the blues is some kind of gift
next time I'd rather have a toaster.

I'm sittin' on the lawn, talkin' to a blonde,
trying to figure out all the double entendre.
Trying to listen to someone trying to sing a song
about the crazy world that we live in.

And the party is a goin' on all over the place.
Even the trees are dropping leaves in my case.
And the goings on a goin' on in front of my face
are making me wonder why.

And I went to a party where I met the mayor.
He's a nice old feller now and he don't care.
And I heard there might be lobster there
but I hadda make do with the chip dip.

Back on the corner tending store
I play a little longer and I make a little more.
The girls all smile but this drunk old bore
is the only one to stick around and listen.

But Linda and Catherine come along soon.
They gimmee a hand when I give 'em a tune
and then they turn around and tie a helium balloon
to the handle of my guitar case.

But the tree won't leave and the dog won't bark
and the moon won't shine, it would ruin the dark
and the squirrels are lookin' for a place to park
and the taxi cabs are picking up nuts.

Well I'm asittin' on a pier, drinking a beer,
(which you better not get caught doin' here).
Ain't it funny how the bottle can take the veneer
right offa your average joe.

Dancin' in the rain while a friend of mine is playin'
a Scottish reel. And there's a fella tossin' watermelon
up from his boat and it's loaded with Tequila

So we ended up the evening on a drunken note.
Every vessel in the harbour's got a brand new coat.
The seagulls cry and fish all float
and everybody else goes home.

Joseph Conrad
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Joseph Conrad.

Joseph Conrad (born Teodor Józef Konrad Korzeniowski, 3 December 1857 - 3 August 1924) was a Polish-born British novelist. Some of his works have been labelled romantic, although Conrad's romanticism is tempered with irony and a fine sense of man's capacity for self-deception.

Many critics regard Conrad as a forerunner of modernism. A dust-jacket review, by Kingsley Amis, of Nostromo (1904) declared that the book "placed him in the front rank of world literature."

Conrad's narrativistic style and existential, anti-heroic characters have influenced many writers, including Ernest Hemingway, DH Lawrence, Graham Greene, Joseph Heller and Jerzy Kosiński, as well as inspiring such films as Apocalypse Now (which was drawn from Conrad's Heart of Darkness).




Youth

Conrad was born Teodor Józef Konrad Korzeniowski (help·info) in Berdyczów (now Berdychiv, Ukraine), into a highly-patriotic landowning Polish family bearing the Nałęcz coat-of-arms. Conrad's father was a writer best known for patriotic tragedies, and a translator of Shakespeare and Victor Hugo from English and French. He encouraged his son to read widely in Polish and French. In 1861 he was arrested by the Russian authorities in Warsaw for helping organise what would become the January Uprising of 1863-64 against Tsarist Russia and was exiled to Vologda. Conrad's mother died there prematurely of tuberculosis in 1865, and his father died four years later in Kraków, leaving Conrad orphaned at the age of eleven.

Young Conrad was placed in the care of his maternal uncle, Tadeusz Bobrowski, in Kraków?-a more cautious figure than his parents. Bobrowski nevertheless allowed Conrad to travel to Marseille and begin a career as a seaman at the age of 16. This came after Conrad was rejected for Austro-Hungarian citizenship, leaving him liable for 25-year conscription into the Russian Army.


Voyages

Conrad lived an adventurous life, becoming involved in gunrunning and political conspiracy, which he later fictionalized in his novel The Arrow of Gold, and apparently had a disastrous love affair, which plunged him into despair. His voyage down the coast of Venezuela would provide material for Nostromo. The first mate of his vessel became the character model for the hero.

In 1878, after a failed suicide attempt, Conrad took service on his first British ship bound for Constantinople, before its return to Lowestoft, his first landing in Britain. He did not become fluent in English until the age of 21, and in 1886 gained both his Master Mariner's certificate and British citizenship, officially changing his name to "Joseph Conrad." He later lived in London and near Canterbury, Kent.

Conrad was to serve a total of sixteen years in the British merchant marine, with passages to the Far East, where his ship caught fire off Sumatra and he spent more than twelve hours in a lifeboat. The experience provided material for his short story, Youth. In 1883 he joined the Narcissus in Bombay, a yoyage that inspired his 1897 novel The Nigger of the Narcissus. Sailing the southeast Asian archipelago would also furnish memories recast in Lord Jim and An Outcast of the Islands.

A childhood ambition to visit central Africa was realised in 1889, when Conrad contrived to reach the Congo Free State. He became captain of a Congo steamboat, and the atrocities he witnessesed and his experiences there not only informed his most acclaimed and ambiguous work, Heart of Darkness, but served to crystalise his vision of human nature ?- and his beliefs about himself. These were in some measure affected by the emotional trauma and lifelong illness he contracted there. During his stay, he became acquainted with Roger Casement, whose 1904 Congo Report detailed the abuses suffered by the indigenous population.

The description of Conrad's protagonist Marlow's journey upriver closely follows Conrad's own, and he appears to have experienced a disturbing insight into the nature of evil. Conrad's experience of loneliness at sea, of corruption and of the pitilessness of nature converged to form a coherent, if bleak, vision of the world. Isolation, self-deception and the remorseless working out of the consequences of character flaws are threads to be found running through much of his work. Conrad's own sense of loneliness throughout his exile's life would find memorable expression in the 1901 short story, "Amy Foster."

Notwithstanding the undoubted sufferings that Conrad endured on many of his voyages, he contrived to put up at the best lodgings at many of his destinations. Hotels across the Far East still lay claim to him as an honoured guest, often naming the rooms he stayed in after him: in the case of Singapore's Raffles Hotel, the wrong suite has been named in his honour, apparently for marketing reasons. His visits to Bangkok are also lodged in that city's collective memory, and are recorded in the official history of the Oriental Hotel, along with that of a less well-behaved guest, Somerset Maugham, who pilloried the hotel in a short story in revenge for attempts to eject him.

Conrad is also reported to have stayed at Hong Kong's Peninsula Hotel. Later literary admirers, notably Graham Greene, followed closely in his footsteps, sometimes requesting the same room. No Caribbean resort is yet known to have claimed Conrad's patronage, although he is believed to have stayed at a Fort-de-France pension upon arrival in Martinique on his first voyage, in 1875, when he travelled as a passenger on the Mont Blanc.


Emotional development

A further insight into Conrad's emotional life is provided by an episode which inspired one of his strangest and least known stories, "A Smile of Fortune." In September 1888 he put into Mauritius, as captain of the sailing barque Otago. His story likewise recounts the arrival of an unnamed English seacaptain in a sailing vessel, come for sugar. He encounters "the old French families, descendants of the old colonists; all noble, all impoverished, and living a narrow domestic life in dull, dignified decay. . . . The girls are almost always pretty, ignorant of the world, kind and agreeable and generally bilingual. The emptiness of their existence passes belief."

The tale describes Jacobus, an affable gentleman chandler beset by hidden shame. Extramarital passion for the bareback rider of a visiting circus had resulted in a child and scandal. For eighteen years this daughter, Alice, has been confined to Jacobus's house, seeing no one but a governess. When Conrad's captain is invited to the house of Jacobus, he is irresistibly drawn to the wild, beautiful Alice. "For quite a time she did not stir, staring straight before her as if watching the vision of some pageant passing through the garden in the deep, rich glow of light and the splendour of flowers."

The suffering of Alice Jacobus was true enough. A copy of the Dictionary of Mauritian Biography unearthed by the scholar Zdzisław Najder reveals that her character was a fictionalised version of seventeen-year-old Alice Shaw, whose father was a shipping agent and owned the only rose garden in the town. While it is evident that Conrad too fell in love while in Mauritius, it was not with Alice. His proposal to young Eugénie Renouf was declined, the lady being already engaged. Conrad left broken-hearted, vowing never to return.

Something of his feelings is considered to permeate the recollections of the captain. "I was seduced by the moody expression of her face, by her obstinate silences, her rare, scornful words; by the perpetual pout of her closed lips, the black depths of her fixed gaze turned slowly upon me as if in contemptuous provocation."


Novelist

In 1894, aged 36, Conrad left the sea to become an English-language author. His first novel, Almayer's Folly, set on the east coast of Borneo, was published in 1895. With its successor, An Outcast of the Islands, it laid the foundations of a reputation as a romantic teller of exotic tales, a misunderstanding of his purpose that was to frustrate Conrad for the rest of his career.

In 1896 he married a 22 year-old Englishwoman, Jessie George, by whom he had two sons, Borys and John. Financial success evaded him, although a Civil List pension of £100 per annum stabilised his affairs, and collectors began to purchase his manuscripts. Conrad's health remained poor for the remainder of his life, although he continued to work relentlessly. In 1923, the year before his death, Conrad, who possessed a hereditary Polish coat-of-arms, declined the offer of a British knighthood (which is not hereditary).

Joseph Conrad died 3 August 1924, of a heart attack, and was interred at Canterbury Cemetery, Canterbury, England, under the name of Korzeniowski.

Of his novels, Lord Jim and Nostromo continue to be widely read, as set texts and for pleasure. The Secret Agent and Under Western Eyes are also considered to be among his finest books. Arguably the most influential work remains Heart of Darkness, to which many have been introduced by Francis Ford Coppola's film, Apocalypse Now, inspired by Conrad's novella and set during the Vietnam War. Of the principal actors, Marlon Brando was the only one not to trouble to read Heart of Darkness[1]. The themes of Heart of Darkness, and the depiction of a journey into the darkness of the human psyche, still resonate with modern readers.


Style

Conrad, an emotional man subject to fits of depression, self-doubt and pessimism, disciplined his romantic temperament with an unsparing moral judgment.

As an artist, he famously aspired, in his preface to The Nigger of the Narcissus (1897), "by the power of the written word to make you hear, to make you feel... before all, to make you see. That ?- and no more, and it is everything. If I succeed, you shall find there according to your deserts: encouragement, consolation, fear, charm ?- all you demand ?- and, perhaps, also that glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to ask."

Writing in what to the visual arts was the age of Impressionism, Conrad showed himself in many of his works a prose poet of the highest order: thus, for instance, in the evocative Patna and courtroom scenes of Lord Jim; in the "melancholy-mad elephant" and gunboat scenes of Heart of Darkness; in the doubled protagonists of The Secret Sharer; and in the verbal and conceptual resonances of Nostromo and The Nigger of the 'Narcissus'.

The singularity of the universe depicted in Conrad's novels, especially compared to those of near-contemporaries like John Galsworthy, is such as to open him to criticism similar to that later applied to Graham Greene.[2] But where "Greeneland" has been characterised as a recurring and recognisable atmosphere independent of setting, Conrad is at pains to create a sense of place, be it aboard ship or in a remote village. Often he chose to have his characters play out their destinies in isolated or confined circumstances.

In the view of Evelyn Waugh and Kingsley Amis, it was not until the first volumes of Anthony Powell's sequence, A Dance to the Music of Time, were published in the 1950s, that an English novelist achieved the same command of atmosphere and precision of language with consistency, a view supported by present-day critics like A. N. Wilson. This is the more remarkable, given that English was Conrad's third language. Powell acknowleged his debt to Conrad.

Conrad's third language remained inescapably under the influence of his first two ?- Polish and French. This provided an exotic foundation, making his English seem unusual even when it was grammatically correct. It was perhaps from Polish and French prose styles that he adopted a fondness for triple parallelism, especially in his early works ("all that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts of wild men"), as well as for rhetorical abstraction ("It was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention").

T.E. Lawrence, one of many men of letters whom Conrad befriended, offered some perceptive observations about Conrad's writing:

He's absolutely the most haunting thing in prose that ever was: I wish I knew how every paragraph he writes (... they are all paragraphs: he seldom writes a single sentence...) goes on sounding in waves, like the note of a tenor bell, after it stops. It's not built in the rhythm of ordinary prose, but on something existing only in his head, and as he can never say what it is he wants to say, all his things end in a kind of hunger, a suggestion of something he can't say or do or think.... He's as much a giant of the subjective as Kipling is of the objective.
In Conrad's time, literary critics, while usually commenting favorably on his works, often remarked that his exotic style, complex narration, profound themes and pessimistic ideas put many readers off. Yet as Conrad's ideas were borne out by 20th-century events, in due course he came to be admired for beliefs that seemed to accord with subsequent times more closely than with his own.

Conrad's was, indeed, a starkly lucid view of the human condition ?- a vision similar to that which had been offered in two micro-stories by his ten-years-older Polish compatriot, Bolesław Prus (whose work Conrad admired): "Mold of the Earth" (1884) and "Shades" (1885). Conrad wrote:

Faith is a myth and beliefs shift like mists on the shore; thoughts vanish; words, once pronounced, die; and the memory of yesterday is as shadowy as the hope of to-morrow....
In this world ?- as I have known it ?- we are made to suffer without the shadow of a reason, of a cause or of guilt....
There is no morality, no knowledge and no hope; there is only the consciousness of ourselves which drives us about a world that... is always but a vain and floating appearance....
A moment, a twinkling of an eye and nothing remains ?- but a clot of mud, of cold mud, of dead mud cast into black space, rolling around an extinguished sun. Nothing. Neither thought, nor sound, nor soul. Nothing.

Sven Nykvist
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Sven Vilhem Nykvist (3 December 1922 - 20 September 2006) was a Swedish cinematographer. He worked on over 120 films, but is known especially for his work with director Ingmar Bergman. He won Academy Awards for his work on two Bergman films, Cries and Whispers (Viskningar och rop) in 1973 and Fanny and Alexander (Fanny och Alexander) in 1983.

His work is generally noted for its naturalism and simplicity. He is considered by many to be one of the greatest cinematographers of all time.


Biography

Nykvist was born in Moheda, Kronobergs län, Sweden. His parents were Lutheran missionaries who spent most of their lives in the Belgian Congo, so Nykvist was raised by relatives in Sweden and saw his parents rarely. His father was a keen amateur photographer of African wildlife, which may have sparked Nykvist's interest in the visual arts.

A keen sportsman in his youth, his first cinematic effort was to film himself taking a high jump so as to improve his technique. After a year at the Municipal School for Photographers in Stockholm, he entered the Swedish film industry at the age of 19.

In 1941, he became an assistant cameraman at Sandrews studio, working on The Poor Millionaire. He moved to Italy in 1943 to work at the Cinecittà, returning to Sweden two years later. In 1945, aged 23, he became a fully-fledged cinematographer, which his first solo credit on The Children from Frostmo Mountain.

He worked on many small Swedish films for the next few years, and spent some time with his parents in Africa filming wildlife, footage which was later released as a documentary entitled In the Footsteps of the Witch Doctor (also known as Under the Southern Cross).

Back in Sweden, he began to work with the legendary director Ingmar Bergman in 1953 on Sawdust and Tinsel (released in the US as The Naked Night). He was one of three cinematographers to work on that movie, the others being Gunnar Fischer and Hilding Bladh.

Nykvist would eventually become Bergman's full-time cinematographer and push the director's work in a new direction, away from the theatrical look of his earlier films. He worked as sole cameraman on Bergman's Oscar-winning films The Virgin Spring in 1959 and Through a Glass Darkly in 1960. He revolutionised the way we see close ups in Bergman's Persona in 1966.

After working with other Swedish directors, including Alf Sjöberg on The Judge (1960) and Mai Zetterling on Loving Couples (1964), and then worked in the US and elsewhere, on Richard Fleischer's The Last Run (1971), Louis Malle's Black Moon (1975) and Pretty Baby (1978), Roman Polanski's The Tenant (1976), Jan Troell's Hurricane (1979), Bob Rafelson's version of The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981), Agnes of God (1985); Woody Allen's Another Woman (1988) and Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), Richard Attenborough's Chaplin (1992), Nora Ephron's Sleepless in Seattle (1993), and Lasse Hallström's What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993).

Nykvist won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography for two of his movies, Cries and Whispers (1973), and Fanny and Alexander (1982), both of which were Bergman films. He was also nominated for a Cinematograhy Oscar for The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988), and in the category of Best Foreign Language Film for The Ox (1991), in which he directed Max von Sydow and Liv Ullman.

He won a special prize at the Cannes Film Festival for his work on The Sacrifice (1986), the last film of the Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky. He was the first European cinematographer to join the American Society of Cinematographers, and received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the ASC in 1996.

He wrote three books, including Curtain Call in 1999.

His wife, Ulrika, died in 1982. Nykvist's career was brought to a sudden end in 1998 when he was diagnosed with aphasia, and he died in 2006, aged 83.

He is survived by his son, Carl-Gustaf Nykvist, who directed his first film, Woman on the Roof, in 1989 and directed a documentary about his father, Light Keeps Me Company, 1999.

Andy Williams
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Howard Andrew Williams (born December 3, 1927 in Wall Lake, Iowa), known as Andy Williams, is an American pop singer.

He first performed in a children's choir at the local Presbyterian church. Williams and his three older brothers Bob, Dick, and Don, formed a quartet, the Williams Brothers, in the late 1930s, and they performed on radio in the Midwest, first at WHO in Des Moines, Iowa, and later at WLS in Chicago and WLW in Cincinnati. Williams graduated from Western Hills High School in Cincinnati. They appeared with Bing Crosby on the hit record "Swinging on a Star" (1944). This led to a nightclub act with entertainer Kay Thompson from 1947 to 1951.

Williams's solo career began in 1952 after his brothers left the act. He recorded six sides for RCA Victor's label "X," but none of them were popular hits. After landing a spot as a regular on Steve Allen's Tonight Show in 1955, he was signed to a recording contract with Cadence Records, a small label in New York run by conductor Archie Bleyer. His third single, "Canadian Sunset" (1956) hit the Top Ten, and was soon followed his only Billboard #1 hit, "Butterfly" (a cover of a Charlie Gracie record on which Williams imitated Elvis Presley). More hits followed, including "The Hawaiian Wedding Song," "Are You Sincere," "The Village of St. Bernadette," and "Lonely Street," before Williams moved to Columbia Records in 1961, having moved from New York to Los Angeles. In terms of chart popularity, the Cadence era was Williams's peak although songs he introduced on Columbia became much bigger standards. Two top ten hits from the Cadence era, "Butterfly" and "I Like Your Kind of Love" were apparently believed to not suit Williams's later style; they were not included on a Columbia reissue of his Cadence greatest hits in the 1960s. Williams ultimately became the owner of his own Cadence master tapes, and licensed them to various labels (including Varese in the U.S.) during the late 1990s.

During the 1960s, Williams became one of the most popular vocalists in the country and was signed to what was at that time the biggest recording contract in history. He was primarily an album artist, and at one time he had earned more gold albums than any solo performer except Frank Sinatra, Johnny Mathis and Elvis Presley. By 1973 he had earned as many as 17 gold album awards. Among his hit albums from this period were Moon River, Days of Wine and Roses (number one for 16 weeks in mid-1963), The Andy Williams Christmas Album, Dear Heart, The Shadow of Your Smile, Love, Andy, Get Together with Andy Williams, and Love Story. In these recordings Williams displays an incredible vocal technique along with an uncanny ability to make each song his very own, often rivaling or surpassing the version by the original artist. These attributes, along with his natural affinity for the music of the 1960s and early 1970s, combined to make him one of the premier easy listening singers of that era.

Williams forged an indirect collaborative relationship with Henry Mancini, although they never recorded together. Williams was asked to sing Mancini and Johnny Mercer's song "Moon River" at the 1962 Oscar Awards (where it won), and it quickly became Williams's theme song. (interestingly, "Moon River" was never a chart hit by Andy). The next year Williams sang "Days of Wine and Roses" which was written by Mancini and Mercer (this song also won). Two years later, he sang Mancini's "Dear Heart" at the 1965 awards and "The Sweetheart Tree" (also written with Mercer) at the 1966 awards.

Williams also competed in the teenage-oriented singles market as well and had several charting hits including "Can't Get Used to Losing You," "Happy Heart," and "Where Do I Begin", the theme song from the 1970 blockbuster film, Love Story. Building on his experience with Allen and some short-term variety shows in the 1950s, he became the star of his own weekly television variety show in 1962. This series, The Andy Williams Show, won three Emmy Awards for outstanding variety program. Among his series regulars were the Osmond Brothers. He gave up the variety show in 1971 while it was still popular and retrenched to three specials per year. His Christmas specials, which appeared regularly until 1974 and intermittently from 1982 into the 1990s, were among the most popular of the genre. Williams has recorded eight Christmas albums over the years. He hosted the Grammy Awards for three consecutive years in the 1970s. He returned to television to do a syndicated half-hour series in 1976-77.

In the early 1990s, Williams gave up most of his touring schedule in order to open his own theatre in Branson, Missouri, the Andy Williams Moon River Theater. He continues to do 8-12 shows a week from September to December and occasionally makes tours of Europe earlier in the year.

His 1967 recording of "Music to Watch Girls By" was a surprise UK hit in 1999, when it reached number 9 after featuring in an advert (beating the original peak of number 33 in 1967). In 2002 he took part in a new duet of "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" with British actress and singer Denise van Outen. Nearly everything Williams ever recorded has now been made available on CD through a series of compilations from 1997 to 2004.

Williams met Claudine Longet when he pulled over to aid her on a Las Vegas road. She was a dancer at the time at the Folies Bergere. They married on Christmas Day, 1961, and had three children, Noelle, Christian, and Robert. They separated in 1969 and finally divorced 6 years later. In 1976 Longet was charged with fatally shooting her boyfriend, skier Vladimir "Spider" Sabich and Williams supported her. He married a second time in May 1991 to the former Debbie Haas. They make their homes at Branson, Missouri and La Quinta, California. Williams's homes have been featured in Architectural Digest, and he is a noted collector of modern art. Williams is an avid golfer. He hosted a major golf tournament in San Diego for many years, which was known as the Andy Williams San Diego Open during that time.

Williams's birthplace is a tourist attraction open most of the year.



Trivia

The Simpsons Nelson Muntz is an Andy Williams fan. In the episode Bart on the Road, he forces the gang to make a detour to Branson so he can see his idol. The bully is reduced to tears as Williams performs an encore of "Moon River".
His nephews, Andy and David Williams, were minor teen idols in the 1970's.
Andy appeared on an episode of "What's My Line", a 1950's panel game show, as a mystery guest. He stumped the panel of his identity by concealing his voice. The panel thought he was a female.
Both Williams and Petula Clark recorded "Happy Heart" at the same time, just prior to his guest appearance on her second NBC-TV special. Unaware she, too, was releasing the song as a single, he asked to perform it on the show, and she graciously acquiesced. The exposure ultimately led to his having the bigger hit with the tune.
The song "Happy Heart" is played during the final scene, and throughout the end credits, of the Danny Boyle film "Shallow Grave"

Jean-Luc Godard
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Jean-Luc Godard (born 3 December 1930 in Paris) is a French filmmaker and one of the most influential members of the Nouvelle Vague, or "French New Wave".

Born in Paris to Franco-Swiss parents, he was educated in Nyon, later studying at the Lycée Rohmer, and the Sorbonne in Paris. During his time at the Sorbonne, he became involved with the young group of filmmakers and theorists that gave birth to the New Wave.

Known for stylistic implementations that challenged, at their focus, the conventions of Hollywood cinema, he became universally recognized as the most audacious and most radical of the New Wave filmmakers. He adopted a position in filmmaking that was unambiguously political. His work reflected a fervent knowledge of film history, a comprehensive understanding of existential and Marxist philosophy, and a scholarly disposition that placed him as the lone filmmaker among the public intellectuals of the Rive Gauche.



Cahiers and early films

After attending school in Nyon, Switzerland, Godard returned to Paris in 1948 and began to attend the Lycée Rohmer, a year before enrolling at the Sorbonne to study anthropology. It was there, in the Latin Quarter of Paris just prior to 1950, that Paris ciné-clubs were gaining prominence. Godard began attending, where he soon met the man who was perhaps most responsible for the birth of the New Wave, André Bazin, as well as those who would become his contemporaries, including Jacques Rivette, Claude Chabrol, François Truffaut, Jacques Rozier, and Jacques Demy.

Despite its intricate manifesto, the guiding principle behind the movement was that "Realism is the essence of cinema." According to Bazin and other members of the New Wave, cinematic realism could be achieved through various aesthetic and contextual mediums. They favored long, deep-focus shots that embodied a more complete scene, where visual information could be transmitted consistently, and avoided "unnecessary editing"; they did not want to disrupt the illusion of reality by constantly taking cuts. This technique can be seen in some of Godard's most celebrated action sequences.

An interesting aspect of Godard's philosophy on filmmaking was his inherent and deliberate embrace of contradiction. In short, Godard used "mass-market" aesthetics in his film to make a statement about capitalism and consequent societal decline. This analysis can be closely reviewed in the book, The Films of Jean-Luc Godard: Seeing the invisible, by David Sterritt.

His approach to film began in the field of criticism. Along with Éric Rohmer and Rivette, he founded the film journal, Gazette du cinéma, which saw publication of five issues in 1950. When André Bazin founded his critical magazine Cahiers du cinéma in 1951, Godard, with Rivette and Rohmer, were among the first writers. Most of the writers for Cahiers du cinéma started making some brief forays into film direction in the years before 1960.

Godard, while taking a job as a construction worker on a dam in 1953, shot a documentary about the building, Opération béton (1955). As he continued to work for Cahiers, he made Une femme coquette (1956), a ten-minute black and white picture; Tous les garçons s'appellent Patrick (1957) another short fiction piece; and Une histoire d'eau (1958), which was created largely out of footage shot by Truffaut that had gone unused.

In 1958 Godard, with a cast that included Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anne Colette, made his last short before gaining notoriety as a filmmaker, Charlotte et son Jules, a homage to Jean Cocteau.


Cinematic period

The Godard canon has never been able to escape the critical desire to distinguish between, and in turn label, its most visible periods. The first and most celebrated period roughly spanned from his first feature, Breathless (1960), through Week End (1967) and focused on narrative and somewhat conventional works that often refer to different aspects of film history. This cinematic period stands in contrast to the revolutionary period that immediately followed it, during which Godard ideologically denounced much of cinema's history as "bourgeois" and therefore without merit.


Films

Godard's first major feature film, Breathless (1960), starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg, was a seminal work of the French New Wave. It was a key determiner of the French New Wave's style, and incorporated quotations from several elements of popular culture ?- specifically American cinema. The distinct style of the film manifested in its numerous jump cuts, use of real locations rather than sets, and freedom from movie convention with character asides and broken eyeline matches. François Truffaut, who co-wrote Breathless with Godard, suggested its concept and introduced Godard to the producer who ultimately funded it, Georges de Beauregard.

The same year, Godard made Le Petit Soldat, which dealt with the Algerian War of Independence. Most notably, it was the first collaboration between Godard and Danish-born actress Anna Karina, whom he later married in 1961 (and divorced in 1964). The film, due to its political nature, was banned from French theaters until 1963. Karina appeared again, along with Belmondo, in A Woman Is a Woman (1961), which was in many ways an homage to the American musical. Karina desires a child, prompting her to leave her boyfriend, played by actor Jean-Claude Brialy, and seek out his best friend (Belmondo) as its father.


Godard's next film, Vivre sa vie (1962) was one of his most popular among critics. Karina starred as Nana, a mother and aspiring actress whose poor circumstances lead her to the life of a streetwalker. It is an episodic account of her trials. The film's style, much like that of Breathless, boasted the type of experimentation that made the French New Wave so influential.

Les Carabiniers (1963) was about the horror of war and its inherent injustice. It was the influence and suggestion of Roberto Rossellini that led Godard to make the film. It follows two peasants who join the army of a king, only to find futility in the whole thing as the king reveals the deception of war-administrating leaders.

His most commercially successful film was Contempt (1963), starring Michel Piccoli and one of France's biggest female stars, Brigitte Bardot. A coproduction between Italy and France, Contempt became known as a pinnacle in filmic modernism with its profound self-reflexivity. The film follows Paul (Piccoli), a screenwriter who is commissioned by the arrogant American movie producer Prokosch (Jack Palance) to rewrite the script for an adaptation of Homer's The Odyssey, which German director Fritz Lang has been filming. Lang's "high culture" interpretation of the story is lost on Prokosch, whose character is a firm indictment of the commercial motion picture hierarchy. Another prominent theme is the inability to reconcile love and labor, which is illustrated by Paul's crumbling marriage to Camille (Bardot) during the course of shooting.

In 1964, Godard and Karina formed a production company, Anouchka Films. He directed Bande à part (Band of Outsiders), another collaboration between the two and described by Godard as "Alice in Wonderland meets Franz Kafka." It follows two young men, looking to score on a heist, that both fall in love with Karina, and quotes from several gangster film conventions.


Une femme mariée (1964) followed Band of Outsiders. Godard made the film while he acquired funding for Pierrot le fou (1965). It was a slow, deliberate, toned-down black and white picture without a real story. The film was entirely produced over the period of one month and exhibited a loose quality unique to Godard.

In 1965, Godard directed Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution, a futuristic blend of science fiction, film noir, and satire. Eddie Constantine starred as Lemmy Caution, a detective who is sent into a city controlled by a giant computer named Alpha 60. His mission is to make contact with Professor von Braun (Howard Vernon), a famous scientist who has fallen mysteriously silent, and is believed to be suppressed by the computer. Later on in the movie, Lemmy Caution discovers that the scientist designed and implemented Alpha 60.

Pierrot le fou (1965) was one of his most cinematic pictures in terms of its complex storyline, distinctive personalities, and apocalyptic ending. Gilles Jacob, an author, critic, and president of the Cannes Film Festival, called it both a "retrospective" and recapitulation in the way it played on so many of Godard's earlier characters and themes. With an extensive cast and variety of locations, the film was expensive enough to warrant significant problems with funding. Shot in color, it departed from Godard's usual black and white minimalist works (typified by Breathless, Vivre sa vie, and Une femme mariée). He solicited the participation of Jean-Paul Belmondo, by then a famous actor, in order to guarantee the necessary amount of capital.

Masculin, féminin (1966), based on two Guy de Maupassant stories, La Femme de Paul and Le Signe, was a study of contemporary French youth and their involvement with cultural politics. An intertitle refers to the characters as "The children of Marx and Coca-Cola."

Godard followed with Made in U.S.A (1966), whose source material was Richard Stark's The Jugger; and Two or Three Things I Know About Her (1967), in which Marina Vlady portrays a woman leading a double life as housewife and prostitute.

La Chinoise (1967) saw Godard at his most politically forthright yet. The film focused on a group of students and engaged with the ideas coming out of the student activist groups in contemporary France. Released just before the May 1968 events, the film is thought to foreshadow the student rebellions that took place.

That same year, Godard made a more colorful and political film, Week End. It follows a Parisian couple as they leave on a weekend trip across the French countryside to collect an inheritance. What ensues is a confrontation with the tragic flaws of the over-consuming bourgeoisie. The film contains some of the most written-about scenes in cinema's history. One of them, a ten-minute tracking shot of the couple stuck in an unremitting traffic jam as they leave the city, is often cited as a new technique Godard used to deconstruct bourgeois trends. Week End's enigmatic and audacious end title sequence, which reads "End of Cinema," appropriately marked an end to the narrative and cinematic period in Godard filmmaking career.


Politics

Politics are never far from the surface in Godard's films. One of his earliest features, Le Petit Soldat, dealt with the Algerian War of Independence, and was notable for its attempt to present the complexity of the dispute rather than pursue any specific ideological agenda. Along these lines, Les Caribiniers presents a fictional war that is initially romanticized in the way its characters approach their service, but becomes a stiff anti-war metanym. In addition to the international conflicts Godard sought an artistic response to, he was also very concerned with the social problems in France. The earliest and best example of this is Karina's potent portrayal of a prostitute in Vivre sa vie.

In 1960s Paris, the political milieu was not overwhelmed by one specific movement. There was, however, a distinct post-war climate shaped by various international conflicts such as the colonialism in North Africa and Southeast Asia. The side that opposed such colonization included the majority of French workers, who belonged to the French communist party, and the Parisian artists and writers who positioned themselves on the side of social reform and class equality. A large portion of this group had a particular affinity for the teachings of Karl Marx. Godard's Marxist disposition did not become abundantly explicit until La Chinoise and Week End, but is evident in several films ?- namely Pierrot and Une femme mariée.


Vietnam

Godard produced several pieces that directly address the Vietnam conflict. Furthermore, there are two scenes in Pierrot le fou that tackle the issue. The first is a scene that takes place in the initial car ride between Ferdinand (Belmondo) and Marianne (Karina). Over the car radio, the two hear the message "garrison massacred by the Viet Cong who lost 115 men". Marianne responds with an extended musing on the way the radio dehumanizes the Northern Vietnamese combatants.

In the same film, the lovers accost a group of American sailors along the course of their liberating crime spree. The two's immediate reaction, expressed by Marianne, is "Damn Americans!" an obvious outlet of the frustration so many French communists felt towards American hegemony. Ferdinand then reconsiders, "That's OK, we'll change our politics. We can put on a play. Maybe they'll give us some dollars." Marianne is puzzled but Ferdinand suggests that something the Americans would like would be the Vietnam War. The ensuing sequence is a makeshift play where Marianne dresses up as a stereotype Vietnamese woman and Ferdinand as an American sailor. The scene ends on a brief shot revealing a chalk message left on the floor by the pair, "Long live Mao!" (Vive Mao!).

Notably, he also participated in Loin du Vietnam (1967). An anti-war project, it consists of seven sketches directed by Godard (who used stock footage from La Chinoise), Claude Lelouche, Joris Ivens, William Klein, Chris Marker, Alain Resnais and Agnés Varda.


Bertolt Brecht

Godard's engagement with German playwright Bertolt Brecht stems primarily from his attempt to transpose Brecht's theory of epic theatre and its prospect of alienating the viewer (Verfremdungseffekt) through a radical separation of the elements of the medium (in Brecht's case theater, but in Godard's, film). Brecht's influence is keenly felt through much of Godard's work, particularly before 1980, when Godard used filmic expression for specific political ends.

For example, Breathless' elliptical editing, which denies the viewer a fluid narrative typical of mainstream cinema, forces the viewers to take on more critical roles, connecting the pieces themselves and coming away with more investment in the work's content. Godard employs this device as well as several others, including asynchronous sound and alarming title frames, with perhaps his favorite being the character aside. In so many of his most political pieces, specifically Week End, Pierrot le fou, and La Chinoise, characters address the audience with thoughts, feelings, and instructions.


Marxism

A Marxist reading is possible with most if not all of Godard's early work. Godard's direct interaction with Marxism does not become explicitly apparent, however, until Week End, where the name Karl Marx is cited in conjunction with figures such as Jesus Christ. A constant refrain throughout Godard's cinematic period is that of the bourgeoisie's consumerism, the commodification of daily life and activity, and man's alienation ?- all central issues of Marx's condemning analysis of capitalism.

In an essay on Godard, philosopher and aesthetics scholar Jacques Ranciere states, "When in Pierrot le fou, 1965, a film without a clear political message, Belmondo played on the word 'scandal' and the 'freedom' that the Scandal girdle supposedly offered women, the context of a Marxist critique of commodification, of pop art derision at consumerism and of a feminist denunciation of women's false 'liberation', was enough to foster a dialectical reading of the joke and the whole story". The way Godard treated politics in his cinematic period was in the context of a joke, a piece of art, or a relationship, presented to be used as tools of reference, romanticizing the Marxist rhetoric, rather than solely being tools of education.

Une femme mariée is also structured around Marx's concept of commodity fetishism. Godard once said that it is "a film in which individuals are considered as things, in which chases in a taxi alternate with ethological interviews, in which the spectacle of life is intermingled with its analysis". He was very conscious of the way he wished to portray the human being. His efforts is overtly characteristic of Marx, who in his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 gives one of his most nuanced elaborations, analyzing how the worker is alienated from his product, the object of his productive activity. Georges Sadoul, in his short rumination on the film, describes it as a "sociological study of the alienation of the modern woman".


Revolutionary period

The period that spans from May 1968 indistinctly into the 1970s has been subject to an even larger volume of inaccurate labeling. They include everything from his militant period, to his radical period, along with terms as precise as Maoist and vague as political. The term revolutionary, however, gives a more accurate impression than any other. The period saw Godard align himself with a specific revolution and employ a consistent revolutionary rhetoric.


Films

Amid the upheavals of the late 1960s Godard became interested in Maoist ideology. He formed the socialist-idealist Dziga-Vertov cinema group with Jean-Pierre Gorin and produced a number of shorts outlining his politics. In that period he travelled extensively and shot a number of films, most of which remained unfinished or were refused showings, but the anti-consumerist Week End was released in 1967. His films became intensely politicized and experimental, a phase that lasted until 1980.

According to Elliott Gould, he and Godard met to discuss the possibility of Godard directing Jules Feiffer's 1971 surrealist play Little Murders. During this meeting Godard said his two favorite American writers were Feiffer and Charles M. Schulz. Godard soon declined the opportunity to direct; the job later going to Alan Arkin.


Jean-Pierre Gorin

After the events of May 1968, when the city of Paris saw total upheaval in response to the "authoritarian de Gaulle republic", and Godard's professional objective was reconsidered, he began to collaborate with like minded individuals in the filmmaking arena. The most notable of these collaborations was with a young Maoist student, Jean-Pierre Gorin, who displayed a passion for cinema that grabbed Godard's attention.

Between 1968 and 1973, Godard and Gorin collaborated to make a total of five films with strong Maoist messages. The most prominent film from the collaboration was Tout va bien, which starred Jane Fonda and Yves Montand, at the time very big stars.


The Dziga Vertov group

The small group of Maoists that Godard had brought together, which included Gorin, adopted the name Dziga Vertov Group. Godard had a specific interest in Vertov, a filmmaker and contemporary of both the great Soviet montage theorists, as well as the Russian constructivist and avant-garde artists such as Alexander Rodchenko and Vladimir Tatlin. Part of Godard's evidently political shift after May 1968 was toward a proactive participation in the class struggle. Vertov's films, particularly his most famous work, Man with the Movie Camera (1929), were very much centered on class struggles.


Later work

His return to somewhat more traditional fiction was marked with Sauve qui peut (la vie) (1980), the first of a series of more mainstream films marked by autobiographical currents: for example Passion (1982), Lettre à Freddy Buache (1982), Prénom Carmen (1984), and Grandeur et décadence (1986). There was, though, another flurry of controversy with Je vous salue, Marie (1985), which was condemned by the Catholic Church for alleged heresy, and also with King Lear (1987), an extraordinary but much-excoriated essay on William Shakespeare and language.

His later films have been marked by great formal beauty and frequently a sense of requiem ?- films such as Nouvelle Vague (New Wave, 1990), the autobiographical JLG/JLG, autoportrait de décembre (JLG/JLG: Self-Portrait in December, 1995), and For Ever Mozart (1996). Allemagne année 90 neuf zéro (Germany Year 90 Nine Zero, 1991) was a quasi-sequel to Alphaville but done with an elegiac tone and focus on the inevitable decay of age. During the 1990s he also produced perhaps the most important work of his career in the multi-part series Histoire(s) du cinéma, which combined all the innovations of his video work with a passionate engagement in the issues of twentieth-century history and the history of film itself.

Jaye P. Morgan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jaye P. Morgan (born Mary Margaret Morgan, December 3, 1931) is a retired popular American singer and game show panelist.

Morgan was born in Mancos, Colorado, but her family moved to California by the time she was in high school. In the late 1940s, at Verdugo Hills High School in Tujunga, Los Angeles, California, she served as class treasurer (and got the nickname "Jaye P." after the banker J. P. Morgan) and sang at school assemblies, accompanied by her brother on guitar.

In 1951, a year after graduation from Verdugo Hills, she made a recording of the song "Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries" which made it to the Top Ten. Soon after, she received an RCA Victor recording contract and she had five hits in one year, including "That's All I Want from You," her biggest hit, which reached #3 on the charts. Other notable hits included "The Longest Walk" and "Pepper Hot Baby".

From 1954 to 1955, she was a vocalist on the television show "Stop the Music." In 1956 she had her own television show, named for her. She did a number of other variety shows as well.

After a period in the 1960s when she did very little in the entertainment field, confining herself to a small number of night club appearances, she returned to the public eye in the 1970s, mainly as an actress.

She played herself on a 1973 episode (The Songwriter) of the sitcom The Odd Couple (TV series).

Morgan also guest starred on The Muppet Show (episode 218) in which she and Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem sang "That Old Black Magic".

It was during the 1970s when she gained a new generation of fans as a foul-mouthed but entertaining regular panelist on the game/variety show The Gong Show in the late 1970s, and in the 1980 "behind-the-scenes" movie version of The Gong Show.

It has been widely reported that Jaye P. Morgan was fired during the The Gong Show's last season for ripping her top off (with no bra underneath) while "Gene Gene The Dancing Machine" was onstage. The firing came down from NBC network programming officials and not from either Chuck Barris or the show's other producers, and according to most reports this came at the demand of the network's Standards and Practices department; the "censors" were reportedly having to censor Morgan's comments and gestures as much as ten times per episode, and as the show progressed the obscenties increased in severity and duration to the point that it would actually interfere with the flow of the show. Morgan as of the time of this entry refuses to discuss the firing other than to acknowledge it happened.

The film clip of her exposing herself was saved, and later used in The Gong Show Movie.

Daryl Hannah
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Daryl Christine Hannah (born December 3, 1962) is an American film actress. After making her screen debut in 1978, Hannah starred in a number of Hollywood films throughout the 1980s. She has recently had several notable roles, including that of Elle Driver in Kill Bill, after a hiatus from major roles during the 1990s.


Biography

Early life

Hannah was born in Chicago, Illinois, to Donald and Susan Hannah. Her parents divorced shortly after her birth and her mother remarried Jerrold Wexler, a businessman and brother of Haskell Wexler, a noted cinematographer. Hannah, a vegetarian since age eleven, grew up with siblings Don and Page Hannah, who also became actors, as well as half sister Tanya Wexler. She attended school at Francis Parker in Chicago.

Hannah became interested in movies at a young age, due to insomnia. She was very shy and was diagnosed as 'borderline autistic'.[1] Hannah attended the private Francis W. Parker School (where she played on the boys' soccer team) and the University of Southern California.


Career

As Pris in Blade RunnerHannah made her film debut in 1978, making a brief appearance in Brian De Palma's horror film The Fury. She subsequently appeared in several early 1980s films, the most notable role of which is probably as the replicant, Pris, in Ridley Scott's 1982 film, Blade Runner. Hannah was cast as a mermaid in Ron Howard's 1984 fantasy, Splash, which was a major financial success, grossing over $62 million[2] and establishing Hannah as a notable film actress.

Hannah's roles in the remainder of the 1980s ranged from successful major roles in Steel Magnolias and the Academy Award-winning Wall Street, to the 1986 film version of The Clan of the Cave Bear, Hannah also played the title role in Fred Schepisi's 1987 film Roxanne, a modern retelling of Edmond Rostand's play Cyrano de Bergerac, a performance which was described as "sweet" and "gentle" by film critic Roger Ebert.[3] She was also in the classic "The Pope Of Greenwich Village" with co-stars Micky Rourke and Eric Roberts.

In the 1990s, Hannah's roles included starring as a giantess in the television movie Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1993), which she also co-produced. She also appeared as the daughter of Jack Lemmon's character in both of the Grumpy Old Men films. In 1995, Hannah was chosen by Empire magazine as #96 of the "100 Sexiest Stars in film history". That same year, Hannah anticipated (by a decade) her Kill Bill role when she appeared as homicidal sociopath Leann Netherwood in The Tie That Binds.


Of Hannah's most recent roles, the best-known may be that of the one-eyed assassin Elle Driver in Kill Bill Volume 1 and Kill Bill Volume 2, directed by Quentin Tarantino. Her performance in these films, as well as her appearances in other recent films, including "Northfork", Casa de los Babys and Silver City, have been described by some critics as a cinematic comeback[4] for Hannah, who had not appeared in many mainstream films in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Hannah wrote, directed and produced a short film, "The Last Supper" wich won an award at the Berlin Film Festival. She directed, produced and was the cinematographer for the documentary "Strip Notes". The documentary, which aired on Channel 4 London and HBO, was about the research she did for her role in the Micheal Radford film "Dancing At The Blue Iguana"

Awards include:

Best Short - The Berlin Film Festival, 1994
Best Fight - MTV Movie Awards "Kill Bill Vol.2", 2005
Best Supporting Actress - Saturn Award "Kill Bill Vol.2" 2004
Best Actress - Saturn Award "Splash". 1984
Influencer Of The Year Award - National Biodiesel Board, 2004
Ongoing Commitment Award - Enviornmental Media Award, 2004
Enviornmental Activism - Water Quality Awards, 2006
Enviornmental Preservation -Artivist Awards, 2006
Hannah and actress Hilary Shepard co-created a boardgame called "Liebrary".[5] Hannah previewed the game on The Ellen DeGeneres Show in December 2005.


Personal life

Hannah, a keen environmentalist, has her own weekly video blog, on sustainable solutions. She often is the sound, camera person and on-screen host for the vlog[6] . Her home runs on solar power and is built with green materials. She also drives a car that runs on biodiesel.[7]

Hannah has never married, but she had long-term relationships with John F. Kennedy, Jr. and singer Jackson Browne, and was romantically linked with actor Val Kilmer. She is the sister-in-law of well-known music producer Lou Adler, who is married to Hannah's sister, Page.

On June 13, 2006, Hannah was arrested - along with Joan Baez and Julia Butterfly Hill - for her involvement with over 40 farmers and their supporters, confronting authorities trying to bulldoze the nation's largest urban farm in South Central Los Angeles. She chained herself to a walnut tree at the South Central Farm in south-central Los Angeles for three weeks in order to protest the farmers' eviction by the property's new owner. The farm had been established in the wake of the 1992 LA riots to allow people in the city to grow food for themselves. However, the land's new owner sought to evict the farmers and develop the land. She was interviewed via cell phone shortly before she was arrested, along with forty four other protesters, and said that she and the others are doing the "morally right thing". [1]

Hannah was featured in a CNET article listing the "top 10 geek girls" where it was mentioned she was extremely shy during her youth and was even diagnosed as being "borderline autistic". In addition to 'Liebrary' she also created the boardgame 'Love It or Hate It'. [8]

Daryl Hannah cares about the problem of sexual slavery and is traveling around the world to make a documentary about the problem. According to America's Most Wanted, Hannah also works in Cambodia to free children used a sex slaves.

Julianne Moore
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Julie Anne Smith (born December 3, 1960), better known as Julianne Moore, is an American actress. Noted for her portrayal of sensible female figures, the red-haired actress has been nominated for four Academy Awards.

Biography

Early life

Moore was born to Peter Moore Smith, a military judge and army colonel, and Anne, a psychiatrist and social worker who emigrated from Dunoon, Scotland; she has a younger sister, Valerie, and brother, Peter Moore Smith, Jr. (born 1965). Her exact birthplace is not confirmed, and is sometimes stated as Fayetteville, North Carolina or Boston, Massachusetts. Growing up as an "army brat", she lived in twenty-three places across the United States and Germany. Moore attended Frankfurt American High School in Frankfurt, Germany, graduating in 1979. She received her Bachelor's degree at the School of Fine Arts in Boston University.


Career

Moore moved to New York City in 1983, working as a waitress before being cast in the dual roles of Frannie and Sabrina Hughes on the soap opera As the World Turns, for which she won a Daytime Emmy Award; she played the roles from 1985 to 1988.

Moore began starring in feature films in the early 1990s, mostly appearing in supporting roles in films like The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, Benny and Joon with Johnny Depp, and The Fugitive. Her part in 1993's Short Cuts gained her critical acclaim and recognition, and she was cast in several high-profile Hollywood films, including 1995's romantic comedy Nine Months, and 1997's summer blockbuster The Lost World: Jurassic Park. Her role in the well-reviewed independent film, Safe, also attracted critical attention.

During the late 1990s and early 2000s, Moore appeared in a series of films that received Oscar recognition, including her roles in Boogie Nights ("Best Supporting Actress" nomination), The End of the Affair ("Best Actress" nomination) and her two 2002 films, Far From Heaven ("Best Actress" nomination) and The Hours ("Best Supporting Actress" nomination). During this period, she also appeared in the commercial successes Hannibal (controversially replacing Jodie Foster as Clarice Starling) and The Forgotten, and in Paul Thomas Anderson's follow-up to Boogie Nights, Magnolia.

Her film, Freedomland, opened in February 2006 to mixed reviews.[1]

Her latest film Trust the Man is directed by her husband, Bart Freundlich and also features her son Caleb.

Moore is rumored to be reprising her role as Ian Malcolm's girlfriend, Dr. Sarah Harding in the film Jurassic Park IV which is set for release in summer 2008


Private life

Moore has been married three times: to Sundar Chakravarthy from November 21, 1983 to October 12, 1985, to John Gould Rubin from May 3, 1986 to August 25, 1995 and, since August 2003, to director Bart Freundlich. The couple, who have been together since 1996, have two children: a son, Caleb Freundlich (born December 4, 1997), and a daughter, Liv Helen Freundlich (born April 11, 2002). She is a noted pro-choice activist and during the last U.S. election donated money to John Kerry's presidential campaign.

Brendan Fraser
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Birth name Brendan James Fraser
Born December 3, 1968 (age 37)
Indianapolis, Indiana United States

Brendan James Fraser (born December 3, 1968 in Indianapolis, Indiana) is a Canadian-American actor.




Biography

Brendan Fraser is the son of a foreign service officer for the Canadian Government Office of Tourism and moved often as a child. He lived in Detroit, Seattle, Ottawa, Netherlands and Switzerland. Fraser attended his first professional theatrical performance in London's West End. He began acting at Toronto's Upper Canada College and later received his Bachelor of Fine Arts at Seattle's Cornish College of the Arts. He originally planned on attending graduate school in Texas but stopped in Hollywood on his way south and decided to stay in Los Angeles and work in movies. His first film role was in Dogfight (1991), and he has since garnered over 30 film credits. In the early years of his film career, Fraser played alongside Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, and Chris O'Donnell in School Ties (1992) and Viggo Mortensen and Ashley Judd in Philip Ridley's The Passion of Darkly Noon. His breakout role was in the title role in 1997's George of the Jungle. He has also made guest appearances on the television shows Scrubs, King of the Hill, and The Simpsons.

Fraser married Afton Smith on September 27, 1998, and has three sons, Griffin Arthur, Holden Fletcher, and Leland Francis. He holds dual Canadian-U.S. citizenship and speaks fluent French. Fraser is also an accomplished amateur photographer.

In March 2006, it was announced that he would be granted a star on Canada's Walk of Fame, the first American-born actor to receive the honor, though as of 2006, he does not have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.


Trivia

Stands 6 ft 3 in (1.91 m) tall.
Fixated with the number "42", he has worn it as his jersey number in all his sports-related films.
His surname is properly pronounced "Fray-zer", though some pronounce it "Frasier" (as in Kelsey Grammer's television character). The correct pronunciation of his surname is a running gag in Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star in which he has a cameo.