Showing posts with label Chicago. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chicago. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 28, 2018

Olivier Azam and Daniel Mermet: 'Howard Zinn, une histoire populaire américaine’ (2015)

Olivier Azam and Daniel Mermet: Howard Zinn, une histoire populaire américaine (2015). First part: Bread and Roses. I first caught this on Free Speech TV. It provides a good sampling, focusing in good part on the Robber Baron period and the impact of the First World War.

Howard Zinn (1922-2010) devoted much of his energy on consciousness raising, building up an appreciation of the history of people and clashes and changes often forgotten or -- like the eight hour work day -- taken for granted. His work is influential; and he was a sweet person.   


"Between 1900 and 1920, like Howard Zinn’s parents, more than 14 million immigrants arrived in the United States. They came fleeing poverty or war, racism or religious persecution. They dreamed of a promised land, of wealth, or simply of a better life. The New World opened its arms wide to the poor and huddled masses of the Old: its unwanted, its fugitives, and even a few utopians . . . After all, the rapidly expanding industries of the time required cheap labor, and immigrant workers - men, women and children - were easy to exploit. But the same period also saw the birth of organized labor, with its strikes and conflicts, and the appearance of great figures like Emma Goldman, Mother Jones, Eugene Debs and the Wobblies."  (Source here). 
Olivier Azam and Daniel Mermet: Howard Zinn, une histoire populaire américaine (2015). Zinn's A People's History of the United States was originally published in 1980.

Zinn Education Project: link here.

Les mutins de Pangée est une coopérative audiovisuelle et cinématographique de production, d’édition et de distribution (en salles, DVD, VOD). Here is a a link.

Today's Rune: Initiation.  

Monday, October 01, 2018

Halle Butler, 'Jillian' (2015), Part II

Halle Butler, Jillian. Chicago: Curbside Splendor, 2015.

Most often, we see things from the perspective of Jillian and Megan, but we also catch fleeting glimpses of consciousness from other characters, mostly people but also a dog (Crispy), raccoons, trees and a bird. I love this!  Also, it reminds me of Werner Herzog's Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009), in which we briefly see things from the perspective of an alligator and an iguana and hear separate musings about the dreams of a pet fish.

Jillian: Characters central and peripheral. Jillian Bradley, her son Adam and dog Crispy. Elena, Susie, Carol -- church ladies. Julie, Tessa, Emma -- Adam's childhood frenemies at day care. Barb - day care teacher. 

Emily (dog seller). 

Dr. Billings, Dr. Schraeder -- at the gastroenterologist office where Jillian works with Megan. 


Randy - Megan's live-in paramour, often thinking privately about breaking up with her. 

Unnamed cop -- pulls Jillian over and orders her car impounded, inspiring Jillian to concoct a story about hitting a deer, requiring imaginary auto repairs and real pain killers. 

Mike Johnson -- County Clerk's office.

Drug representative with dolly cart -- Jillian and Megan's office.

Carrie, Janet, Jessica, Steve, Bill, Annie, Amanda, David, Will, James, Sarah, Albert, Kelly, Anthea -- various and sundry acquaintances and frenemies, objects of jealousy and competition. 

Loud Jim and unnamed guy on bus -- provide outside perspectives. 

Raccoons, trees, unnamed bird -- provide outside perspectives, sort of Zen, sort of Shinto. 
Not to worry: no deer is injured in the novel. Jillian does acquire TYLENOL® T3 with Codeine for her "accident," though. 

Megan immediately responds to Jillian's not showing up at work: "Her absence was intriguing." (page 102). This is exactly the same way I respond when someone doesn't show up at work, so I can't help but laugh every time I read this -- as with so much else in the novel.


Off the charts: a section on "Memory Palaces" and, earlier, Megan going to a fancy grocery: "That day she thought, 'F**k it,' and went to the smaller grocery store. The store was for rich people, but f**k it, right? There were delights there." 

(page [109]. "F**k" is spelled out in the original, but as I'm not sure what the censorship policies are for blog posts, here I've added asterisks to protect the eyes of delicate readers and keep Puritans at bay).

Jillian's snack choices (and her life choices in general) also inspire knowing laughs -- read and weep!

I'm truly looking forward to Halle Butler's The New Me: A Novel (Penguin Books, 2019) and wish I could read it immediately: "because life just keeps grinding on, right?" (Jillian, page [109]).

Today's Rune: Initiation. 




Friday, September 28, 2018

Halle Butler, 'Jillian' (2015), Part I

Halle Butler, Jillian. Chicago: Curbside Splendor, 2015.

I read this twice in a row, first to see what happens and secondly, to see how things happen. 

Musing on Butler's style and substance, I had a vision of Diablo Cody (Juno, Young Adult, Tully) working with Werner Herzog (Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Bad Lieutenant) to create a variation on Charles Schulz's Peanuts. It's wacky, sad and right on.

The setting is not overplayed, but there are clues that the location is Chicago (North Side, Far North Side, Northwest Side, Palatine or thereabouts), and the time is the 21st century, with lingering vestiges of the 20th (an office fax machine, for instance).

If you approach the main characters with the Dalai Lama's discussion of Compassion in mind, you will truly empathize with them. "To be genuine, compassion must be based on respect for the other, and on the realization that others have the right to be happy and overcome suffering, just as much as you. On this basis, since you can see that others are suffering, you develop a genuine sense of concern for them." (The Essential Dalai Lama: His Important Teachings, edited by Rajiv Mehrotra, New York: Penguin, 2005, p. 22).
Jillian Bradley is, on the surface, recklessly optimistic, while her office co-worker and foil Megan is heedlessly cynical. Both are unmoored, lost, nearly alone (socially alienated, trapped in their own minds) as they deal with contemporary life, complete with its endless economic constrictions, demands and expectations. The raucous humor of Butler's approach underscores the daunting realities of their lives. It's a bit like Ulysses through the scrim of two 21st century adult female workers who must deal with the indignities, absurdities and possibilities of daily life. 

Another post will delve into additional details, but the main things to keep in mind for now are that Jillian has a young son, Adam, and she adds a dog, Crispy, to the volatile mix of her household economy; while Megan, depressed and cutting -- wickedly so, at times -- has a dubious paramour, Randy, and even more dubious frenemies to contend with. It is through their interconnecting social -- and socio-economic -- relations that Jillian and Megan must operate, and with which many readers will undoubtedly relate. 

Today's Rune: Harvest. 

Thursday, July 05, 2018

Michael Schultz: 'Cooley High' (1975)

Cooley High (1975). Directed by Michael Schultz, who also directed Car Wash (1976), covered here last month. Here's a link. 

The setting for Cooley High is Chicago in the year 1964. A fairly low-budget film, it was a hit in the mid-1970s, an exciting time for cultural offerings. Scripted by Eric Monte, who also worked on What's Happening!! (which shifted the Cooley High setting to Los Angeles). 

Main actors include Glynn Turman as Preach, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs as Cochise, Cynthia Davis as Brenda and Garret Morris as Mr. Mason, a teacher-mentor who looks out for them. Hilton-Jacobs was also in Welcome Back, Kotter, a 1970s series that co-starred John Travolta. 
Preach shows the initially dubious Brenda that they have a shared interest in poetry. He's got a sort of Thelonius Monk-Dizzy Gillespie-Spike Lee kind of look with those glasses and, when roaming around, his cap. 

Cooley High isn't all fun and games. There's a sense of mortality hovering in the background, with a couple of poignant drinking salutes to the dead -- a custom with which I am quite familiar.

Cooley High is also nicely enriched with a Motown-powered soundtrack.

Today's Rune: Partnership.    

Tuesday, May 22, 2018

Sean Baker: 'The Florida Project' (2017)

I first learned about Sean Baker's The Florida Project (2017) because one of its stars, Willem Dafoe, received an Academy Award nomination for his performance in it. 

The Florida Project zeroes in on some of the people attached by work or residency to the Magic Castle and Futureland motels on the ragged Kissimmee periphery of Disney World. 

We see things largely though the perspectives of circa six-year-old kids, particularly Moonee (Brooklynn Kimberly Prince), Jancey (Valeria Cotto) and Scooty (Christopher Rivera); their mothers/guardians Halley (Bria Vinaite), Ashley (Mela Murder) and Stacey (Josie Olivio); and Bobby, the manager of Magic Castle (Dafoe).  
This film is a gem. The milieu and performances are right on. The perspectives are so evocative that The Florida Project unleashed a flood of memories for me, from when I was six years old! It's so true!

When I was six, my immediate family was living in an apartment complex in Justice, Illinois, about nineteen or twenty miles southeast of Chicago by car. We resided there for a couple of years as a transit point between Pennsylvania and Minnesota, based on my father's job trajectory.

There I had friends and acquaintances named Boatsie, Pic and Misty -- pretty close to names like Moonee, Scooty and Jancey. We would run around the area, in and nearby the apartment complex, exactly as they do in the movie -- it was a most excellent thing being a "Free Range" kid, sometimes on the dangerous side.

We occasionally got into the same kinds of trouble the kids do in The Florida Project, but much more dramatic events for us included seeing the devastation brought by tornadoes ripping through the nearby landscape, a huge building fire in our complex, and helping out afterwards. 
Where were you when you were six years old?  The answer may inform your response to The Florida Project. What you bring may translate into what you see reflected. So, at least, it was for me. 

Today's Rune: Fertility.           

Saturday, October 03, 2015

'Best of Enemies' (2015): Buckley vs. Vidal

Best of Enemies (2015): a documentary film by Morgan Neville & Robert Gordon, centers on the 1968 televised debates between Gore Vidal ("liberal") and William F. Buckley, Jr. ("conservative"). This excellent work takes the participant-spectator to a place where the culture and history of those times as well as these times can be put in clearer perspective, regardless of one's personal or group worldview. This is done largely though the scrim of American network TV, but includes additional angles and mirrors. 

I loved this film on first look and aim to get my hands on a copy upon its November 3, 2015 DVD release, for further consideration.    
Best of Enemies: the news reporters, most gone now, good to see in action again, time regained if just for the duration of the film. And the witty antagonists, leading their factions, obsessed with each other and their zingers and their overall performances. Buckley permanently upset by his loss of control, Vidal having gotten under his skin; Vidal, upset by his ebbing influence in older age. A beautiful, funny and sad arc that leads to the always-unfolding now of continuing ideological conflicts of words, wars and colliding worlds. Wow.  

Today's Rune: Joy. 

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Charlotte Zwerin: 'Salesman' (1968, 1969): Take Two

Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Charlotte Zwerin: Salesman (1968, 1969). The Maysles Brothers had previous experience at being door-to-door salesmen. They understood the lifestyle, and the stakes.   
Criterion Collection DVD. Chapter listing, including "Lost in Opa Locka," Florida. 
Much of the film spotlights Paul "The Badger" Brennan, who is in decline as a salesman from better years. "An orchestral version of 'This Land Is Your Land' is heard on Brennan's radio as he drives through the snow to a series of appointments with clients who are not home. The irony could not be clearer . . ."  ~ Joe McElhaney's Albert Maysles. Contemporary Film Directors series. University of Illinois Press, 2009, page 46.  

Today's Rune: Defense. 

Monday, July 13, 2015

Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Charlotte Zwerin: 'Salesman' (1968, 1969): Take One

Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Charlotte Zwerin: Salesman (1968, 1969). Thanks to The Criterion Collection, it's still circulating among interested parties in DVD format. 

This documentary in black and white, ostensibly about Irish American Catholic Bible salesman, shows us a microcosm of (any kind of) sales work. Although with Salesman we specifically see a grueling door-to-door kind of selling, peddling and hawking in their various forms date back, one suspects, thousands of years. Selling is a truly social, virtually relentless activity with a long history.  
Direct cinema style: prospective Bible buyers let Albert and David Maysles film their interactions with the salesmen, but unlike "Reality TV" today, they don't seem much concerned about appearance or action. (Charlotte Zwerin edited the raw footage into a coherent "story" with a sort of beginning, middle and end, but no intrusive narration).

Two questions for now. One: how much of an "observer effect" distorts what might have otherwise happened had there been no cameras, just salesmen and clients?

Two: How have sales techniques changed along with technology and living patterns, specifically since Salesman was made in the 1960s? Or have they?

Today's Rune: Journey.

Wednesday, July 08, 2015

'The Hippest Trip in America: *Soul Train* and the Evolution of Style and Culture'

I picked this up in transit and finished last night: Nelson George's The Hippest Trip in America: Soul Train and the Evolution of Style and Culture (William Morrow, 2015 paperback edition; originally published in 2014).

As its full title lays out, this nifty tome covers the history, context and impact of Soul Train, from its Chicago roots to LA, from Don Cornelius to the singers, from the bands and dancers to the business angles.
Don Cornelius and Soul Train are a trip. I still sporadically catch syndicated episodes and am especially enthralled by the 1970s performances. One of my favorites features a chubby young Al Sharpton giving James Brown some kind of improvised award -- real showmanship at work all around and all the time. This is how it's done, people. Can you dig? 

RIP, Don Cornelius (1936-2012).

Today's Rune: Breakthrough. 

Thursday, January 23, 2014

Coen Brothers: Inside Llewyn Davis


Seeing Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), it's 1961, okay? All across the USA . . . It's set mostly in NYC, Chicago and along the road in between. 

I really like this film, and it'll take a while to absorb. Kind of trippy, kind of existential, kind of like a mythical tale, with realism, magical. On the road between the cities in snow and at night -- these scenes were mesmerizing. And along came Dylan. Can you dig?

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune. 
   

Thursday, November 21, 2013

Converging Into Synchronicity

So about a year ago, I finished about half of Roger Ebert's Life Itself (2011). Then I left it at an auto mechanic's shop and someone walked off with it. Then I got another copy at Half Price Books and set it aside for completion. That was a few months ago.

This past weekend, a DVD copy of The Good Fight: The Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War (1984) 
arrived in the mail, but I figured it might be a bit depressing so laid it aside for "later." I did read the cover and noted that Studs Terkel was the narrator. 

On Sunday, word was out that Nobel Prize-winning writer Doris Lessing had died. In conversations that day, Lessing came up. Not surprising. Then Studs Terkel came up. The Spanish Civil War came up. And that evening, Ebert came up -- remembering that he died this year, too, back in April.

Okay, by that evening I had also decided to give The Good Fight a shot, depressing or not. (It isn't -- quite the opposite). Then, having recently finished a Béatrix Beck novel, I grabbed the nearest next book on a stack of them which turned out to be none other than Roger Ebert's Life Itself. Trying to figure out where exactly I'd left off, I looked at the table of contents and noticed the chapter 52 title header, "Studs."  Coincidence? Knowing that both Ebert and Studs Terkel were all things Chicago, it had to be the same Studs, right? Indeed, it was, and on the first page of the chapter (page 397 of my hardback copy), Ebert recounts being asked to drive Studs and a visitor around Chicago. And the visitor was . . . Doris Lessing. I got a shiver. That's just too strange, all the day's major people of discussion converging into synchronicity verbally and in Ebert's book on the very day we first learn of Doris Lessing's death. What are the chances they'd appear on the same page, together, on that same red letter date? 

Whatever it means, there it is.   
  

Sunday, October 20, 2013

The Age of Picasso and Matisse (Take Two)

The ticket's detailing looks like something out of the early 1980s. Computer World, indeed. A simple arti-fact.
This one by Franz Marc jumps out of the wall as you approach ~ Die verzauberte Mühle / The Bewitched Mill ~ completed in 1913, exactly one hundred years ago. How many enchanted animals can you make out in there?

Poor Franz was killed at Verdun in 1916, during the Great War, at age thirty-six.
Today's Rune: Signals. 

Saturday, October 19, 2013

At the Kimbell: The Age of Picasso and Matisse (Take One)

Took a close look at the Kimbell Art Museum's latest exhibition, The Age of Picasso and Matisse: Modern Masters from the Art Institute of Chicago.  Though I remember some from Chicago during a brief Chicago visit in the last ten years, there are many "new" works to consider, enough to prompt me into joining the Kimbell as a "new member." Hence, I'll be back to see more of this soon, hopefully.
Suzanne Duchamp's Multiplication brisée et rétablie / Multipication Broken and Restored (1919).  Fun mix of color, shapes and text.
Flip the image surface of Multiplication brisée et rétablie and voila! La Tour Eiffel / The Eiffel Tower, as if crackling with elecricity. Are those planets and moons mysteriously manifesting?

Suzanne Duchamp (October 20, 1889-September 11, 1963) had three older brothers, also artists -- including Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968).

Today's Rune: Protection.  

Thursday, August 29, 2013

Sugartime

Finally checked out Sugartime (1995), the HBO movie directed by John N. Smith about the amour fou romance between Sam the Cigar Giancana (John Turturro) and Phyllis McGuire (Mary-Louise Parker) of the goody two-shoes McGuire Sisters. Inherently interesting in both the time-bound and timeless ways of the world.

And then there are the intriguing connections between Chicago, Vegas, Miami, Cuba, Fidel Castro, the Kennedys, Dan Rowan of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In -- and Frank Sinatra. Reality is a wild ride, but how closely do the dots connect? 

Of the three McGuire sisters, Phyllis is the only one still living -- she's 82 and lives in Vegas. 
Mistress mayoress complained 
that the pottage was cold;
"And all long of your fiddle-faddle," quoth she.
"Why, then, Goody Two-shoes, what if it be?
Hold you, if you can, your tittle-tattle," quoth he.

(-- Charles Cotton, 1670)

Today's Rune: Fertility.      

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

The Great Blackout of 2003 in the US and Canada

For those who found themselves on this date ten years ago located within any swath of North America ranging from Detroit to Toronto to Manhattan, here's an oft-evocative writing prompt: "How did you respond to the Great Blackout of 2003?"
I've already gotten more than 100 responses so far, forming a mosaic of tales tall and short, muted and loud. The folks trapped in an elevator when the power failed. The heat. The food sizzling on grills in backyards and alleyways. The mad dashes from place to place grand and small. Generators. Boozing. Car radios. Dancing in the streets. Bartering by flashlight. All of it and more! How about you? 


Of course, some folks ain't never even done heard of nothing like such a thing. But there ya go, that's the way of the world and all the people in it. Go ask them that's stuck in Cairo or Aleppo on this date today, in the year 2013. Or in the parlance of our day:

***What?***

Today's Rune: Journey.   

Monday, July 01, 2013

World's Fair Redux


World's Fair events were a great and life-affirming thing! What the hell happened to them?  There hasn't been a single one in nearly thirty years in North America. Since that duffer Reagan, come to think of it.

Is it now once again possible that Toronto will host a new World's Fair in 2015 or a World Expo in 2025? At this point, maybe not. But if it did, how would it compare to Montreal's Expo 67?   
The World's Fair and similar expositions were once upon a not-too-distant time ago very exciting magnets for people from all over the place. Here's my great uncle Clifford "Uncle Cliff" France (1899-1992) and great aunt Jessie Irene Lovejoy France (1903-1986) at some expo or World's Fair grounds -- probably during the Great War of 1914-1918. That is, I believe from their ages and attire that this is during the Great War period, possibly the 1904 St. Louis fairgrounds. I've been trying to match the backdrop architecture with photos in Cathy Jean Maloney's World's Fair Gardens: Shaping American Landscapes (University of Virginia Press, 2012), and the 1904 St. Louis "Louisiana Purchase Exposition" grounds seem closest so far. Any other ideas or suggestions welcomed!

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune.

   

Tuesday, February 05, 2013

Genova
























Jeesh, this is already the seventh Michael Winterbottom movie I've posted about. What I like about his approach is how he engages with the world, with people, and with people in the world, all relating to each other. Usually up close and personal. With Genova (2008; rebranded in the US as A Summer in Genoa), this all very much holds true.

Setup: a father and two daughters move from Chicago to Genoa for a year after the mother dies in a car wreck. They all three are soon trying to get their bearings. The older daughter quickly comes to hang out with somewhat risky local peers, while the younger begins to see their mother's ghost (and/or is having post-traumatic stress intrusions upon everyday life). The father is sort of in a daze, caught between anxiously caring for his daughters and being vaguely wooed by an old colleague and a new student.  

Primary setting: Genova (Genoa), Italy -- at something like 2,500 years old, it's worth its weight in history and gold and, even aside from the intertwining story, a major character in its own right. Including cuisine -- pasta with pesto, and so on.  




















Ensemble acting is very effective. They made me care, hoping they'd make it through a difficult time in their lives without further damage, anxious for their well-being. Key actors: Colin Firth, Hope Davis, Catherine Keener, Margherita Romeo, Perla Haney-Jardine and Willa Holland. Also: narrow medieval alleyways (caruggi), the Mediterranean Sea, Catholic inconography, music, everything. 

Today's Rune: Joy.    

Friday, March 16, 2012

Redd Foxx



















I've always liked Redd Foxx (1922-1991). It doesn't hurt that I share the same birthday (December 9). Now learning new stuff after starting in on Black and Blue: The Redd Foxx Story by Michael Seth Starr (Applause, 2011). So far, I've followed him from St. Louis (family name: Sanford; father and brother's name, Fred) to a black Catholic school in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to Chicago to Harlem to New Jersey and across country. He's an enterprising (and lucky) survivor all down the line: as "Chicago Red," running buddy with "Detroit Red," subsequently Malcolm X; as singer; as MC; as stand-up comic; and as ladies' man.  One of the coolest photos in the book is of Foxx and Malcolm X meeting at Shabazz Restaurant, Harlem, in 1962.

Today's Rune: Wholeness.     

Friday, February 03, 2012

Comes and Goes in Threes














Fare thee well of three to tell: Ben Gazzara (1930-2012) -- pictured above left in a still from John Cassavetes' Opening Night (1977), with Gena Rowlands and Cassavetes; Don Cornelius (1936-2012); and Mike Kelley (1954-2012).  

















Here's one of my favorite moments in all of Soul Train: after Don Cornelius speaks with James Brown, he introduces Al Sharpton,"an astouding young brother" -- then 19 going on 39 -- who's there to give a presentation as National Director of the National Youth Movement, Incorporated. "And what do we have here?" Cornelius asks of Sharpton, who proceeds to award Brown a "Black Record" for his gold record, "The Payback." Sharpton observes, "We feel 'The Payback' is sort of like the theme song for young black America in 1974."




















Mike Kelley, Detroit-connected member of Destroy All Monsters and independent artist, went out with a bang within 24 hours of Don Cornelius. Kind of extra eerie when you consider the cover of the Destroy All Monsters CD, November 22 1963 (2007 import). When I see samples of his installation work, I'm reminded of Detroit's Tyree Guyton and the Heidelberg Project.

Today's Rune: Harvest.

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Angela Y. Davis: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday Redux













Already with her in spirit despite differences in gender and race, I learned a lot from Angela Y. Davis' Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday (Vintage, 1999, Random House, 1998). Building as it does on Daphne Duval Harrison's Black Pearls: Blues Queens of the 1920s (Rutgers, 1988), this work has deepened and broadened my perspective, certainly. In addition to rendering a compelling analytical study of the three major recording artists enumerated in the subtitle (who were also very popular live performers, all with enduring impact) -- and with due consideration and attention given to race, gender and class -- Davis also provides her own very helpful transcriptions of the lyrics of Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith.
























Davis' introduction concludes:

"Finally, I hope this study will inspire readers to listen to the recordings of Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday both for pleasure and for purposes of research, and that it will occasion further interdisciplinary studies of the artistic and social contributions of blues and jazz women." (p. xx).

Toward these goals, I've been working on two St. Louis and Chicago-based blues singers of the 1920s and 1930s, Luella Miller and Mary Johnson, mostly listening to their recordings and transcribing their lyrics as sung. Some of the initial results have been posted on this blog. The work of Davis, Harrison and others gives these kinds of studies impetus, direction and added relevance.  

Today's Rune: Wholeness.