January 2005 Blog
2005, Jan 19; 10:45 ::: Cabinet of curiosities
"Musei Wormiani Historia", the frontispiece from the Museum Wormianum (1655) depicting Ole Worm's cabinet of curiosities.
Cabinets of curiosities (also known as wonder-rooms) were collections of natural history artifacts kept by many early practitioners of science in Europe, and were pre-cursors to natural history museums.
Two of the most famously described cabinets were those of Ole Worm (also known as Olaus Wormius) and Athanasius Kircher. These 17th century cabinets, actually room-sized collections, were filled with preserved animals, horns, tusks, skeletons, minerals, and so on. Often they would contain a mix of fact and fiction, including apparently mythical creatures. Worm's collection contained, for example, what he thought was a Scythian lamb, a wooly fern thought to be a plant/sheep fabulous creature. The specimens displayed were often collected during exploring expeditions and trading voyages.
Cabinets of curiosities would often serve scientific advancement when images of their contents were published. The catalog of Worm's collection, published as the Museum Wormianum (1655) used the collection artifacts as a starting point for Worm's speculations on philosophy, science, natural history, and more.
Obviously cabinets of curiosities were limited to those who could afford to create and maintain them. Many monarchs, in particular, developed large collections. Frederick III of Denmark, who added Worm's collection to his own after Worm's death, was one such monarch.
In Los Angeles, California, the modern-day Museum of Jurassic Technology anachronistically seeks to recreate the sense of wonder that the old cabinets of curiousity once aroused.--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabinet_of_curiosities [Jan 2005]
2005, Jan 19; 10:20 ::: William Blake: The Complete Illuminated Books (2004) - William Blake
William Blake: The Complete Illuminated Books (2004) - William Blake [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
From Publishers Weekly
Editions of Blake's poetry which as an artist and printer he frequently engraved and published himself most often fail to reproduce his integral illustrations, or do so in poor enough quality as to negate the effort. This Complete edition from the Blake Trust, published last year in a Thames and Hudson hardback edition that is now out of print, should replace the b&w-only Dover edition (but not David V. Erdman's commentary therein, or his reading text The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake) for any reader. The 366 crisp color and 30 b&w reproductions here, culled from the scholarly Princeton University Press six-volume annotated set, are little short of a revelation, giving us Songs of Innocence, Songs of Experience, America, Milton, Jerusalem and the rest of the Blake canon in a form acceptably close, as Binder's introduction makes clear, to the way Blake wanted us to see them. Many of these works are currently hanging in a special Blake exhibition the largest ever at the Met in New York, for which the Abrams book serves as an informative and revealing catalogue. Hamlyn, a senior curator at London's Tate (where the exhibition originated), and the University of York's Phillips present prints, drawings, paintings, selections from Blake's own illuminated books and other relevant materials, such as snapshots from Blake's marvelous editions of Edward Young's Night Thoughts and Thomas Gray's Poems. Introductory essays from novelist and biographer Peter Ackroyd (Blake; T.S. Eliot) and Marilyn Butler, rector of Oxford's Exeter College, synopsize Blake's life and times, while extensive "label copy" situates each work as presented. While the visual overview is useful and some of the detail shots of larger works are compelling, poetry readers who have to choose will take the Complete. --Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.Product Description:
In his Illuminated Books, William Blake combined text and imagery on a single page in a way that had not been done since the Middle Ages. For Blake, religion and politics, intellect and emotion, mind and body were both unified and in conflict with each other: his work is expressive of his personal mythology, and his methods of conveying it were integral to its meaning. There is no comparison with reading books such as Jerusalem, America, and Songs of Innocence and of Experience in Blake's own medium, infused with his sublime and exhilarating colors. Tiny figures and forms dance among the lines of the text, flames appear to burn up the page, and dense passages of Biblical-sounding text are brought to a jarring halt by startling images of death, destruction, and liberation. Blake's hope that his books would obtain wide circulation was unfulfilled: some exist only in unique copies and none was printed in more than very small numbers. Now, for the first time, the plates from the William Blake Trust's Collected Edition have been brought together in a single volume, with transcripts of the texts and an introduction by the noted scholar David Bindman. A major retrospective exhibition of Blake's work can be seen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (March-June 2001). 400 color illustrations.William Blake (November 28, 1757- August 12, 1827) was an English poet, mystic, painter and printmaker, or "Author & Printer," as he signed many of his books. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Blake [Jan 2005]
2005, Jan 18; 19:23 ::: Bizzarie di varie figure (1624) - Giovanni Battista Bracelli
Bizzarie di varie figure (1624) - Giovanni Battista Bracelli
Giovanni Battista Bracelli, who had apparently been active in Florence, Rome and Naples, between 1624 and 1649. In Florence in 1624 he had dedicated to the Medici thirty-two plates gathered under the title Bizzarie di varie figure. --http://www.spamula.net/blog/archives/000151.html [Jan 2005]
2005, Jan 18; 14:01 ::: Codex Seraphinianus (1981) - Luigi Serafini
Codex Seraphinianus (1981) - Luigi Serafini
About thirteen and a half years ago I first learnt of the existence of a strange and remarkable book called the Codex Seraphinianus. I read about it in Douglas Hofstadter’s Metamagical Themas. --Stuart Heath via http://www.spamula.net/blog/archives/000164.html [Jan 2005]
Luigi Serafini was born in Rome in 1949. He starts in the 60's being a traveller and than he becomes an architect. Years later he works on the Codex Seraphinianus" (Franco Maria Ricci, Milano 1981), up to now at its sixth edition. He publishes "Pulcinellopedia (piccola)" (Longanesi, Milano 1983). Than he decides to dedicate his life to the industrial Design, he opens an Atelier of ceramic in Umbria between art and handcraft. He is " Visiting artist" in Alberta (Canada). He publishes stories for Bompiani and Archinto and many magazines. He collaborate with the last movie of Fellini, whose designs are the introducing base .For the theatre "La Scala" he realizes the scenes, lights and customs of a ballet, and for the television some jingles in graphic computer and scenography for talk-shows.He organizes personal exposition especially in Holland and he participates to collective expositions. At the moment he is painting with oils and writes on the " Passeggiate Romane" de "Il Messaggero" and he is interested in Gastronomy. He lives between Rome and Milan in an imaginary city where via Dei Condotti comes up in Piazza Cordusio. --http://www.futurarium.com/20022003/ls_e.htm [Jan 2005]
2005, Jan 18; 13:49 ::: The Fantastic in Art and Literature
Ukobach (1863) - J.A.S. Collin de Plancy. Dictionnaire Infernal. Paris : E. Plon, 1863. Page 672.
http://fantastic.library.cornell.edu/index.php
Hosted by the Cornell University Library, it compiles and indexes nearly three-hundred images on the theme of the fantastic in art and literature. --via http://www.spamula.net/blog/archives/000194.html [Jan 2005]
2005, Jan 18; 12:59 ::: Mihály Zichy (1827 - 1906)
Artwork by Mihály Zichy (1827 - 1906) via http://www.spamula.net/blog/archives/000289.html
Fabulous blog, have a look at the pictures hosted there at http://images.google.com/images?q=site:spamula.net&hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&safe=off&start=40&sa=N [Jan 2005]
Stuart Heath (1959 - ) 's Spamula.net now consists of two blogs : Giornale Nuovo and Curiosities of Literature. --http://www.spamula.net [Jan 2005]
About Curiosities of Literature:
An incrementally-published online presentation of Isaac D’Israeli’s book Curiosities of Literature, a compendium of book-lore originally published in six volumes between 1791 and 1834. The present text is reproduced from an undated (but probably 1870s or ’80s) single-volume edition published by Routledge.About Giornale Nuovo :
An accumulation of inconsequential notices in the shape of a web-log
2005, Jan 18; 09:35 ::: Georges Pichard after Pierre Louÿs
Georges Pichard (D'après "Trois filles de leur mère" de Pierre Louÿs)
Pierre Louys (1870 - 1925) was a French author, writer and poet.
He used lesbian themes in many of his poems. The 20th Century lesbian-oriented homophile association the Daughters of Bilitis is named for his 1894 compilation The Songs of Bilitis. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Lou%FFs [Jan 2005]
2005, Jan 17; 23:36 ::: Castles of Europe
Schloss Neuschwanstein, near Munchen, Germany
Gilles de Rais's castle at Machecoul, 40 km from Nantes, France
Marquis de Sade's castle at Lacoste, 40 km from Avignon, France. It was recently restored by Pierre Cardin.
Elizabeth Báthory's castle at Cachtice, near Bratislava, Slovakia
2005, Jan 17; 21:31 ::: La Bas (Down There) (1891) - Joris Karl Huysmans
La Bas (Down There) (1891) - Joris Karl Huysmans [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Product Description:
At the novel’s center is Durtal, a writer obsessed with the life of one of the blackest figures in history, Gilles de Rais-child murderer, sadist, necrophile and practitioner of all the black arts. The book’s authentic, extraordinarily detailed descriptions of the Black Mass have never been surpassed.
2005, Jan 17; 17:42 ::: Warm Water Under A Red Bridge (2001) - Shohei Imamura
Warm Water Under A Red Bridge (2001) - Shohei Imamura [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Amazon.com
This strange fable of a movie, like other movies by Japanese director Shohei Imamura (The Eel, Dr. Akagi), is both enchanting and perplexing. After being laid off, a salesman (Koji Yakusho) travels to a small town to seek out a treasure hidden by an elderly friend of his. Instead, he finds a young woman who has a peculiar condition: she releases gushes of water when she has orgasms. Meanwhile, her grandmother waits for the man who left her years ago to return; an African marathon runner passes their house every day; and three fishermen cast their lines into the nearby river, for the water the young woman vents attracts an abundance of fish. The baffling significance of the movie's more fantastic elements doesn't keep Warm Water Under a Red Bridge from also being charming, strangely sincere, and surreally comic. --Bret Fetzer, AmazonShohei Imamura (born 15 September 1926 in Tokyo, Japan) is a Japanese film director. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shohei_Imamura [Jan 2005]
Takashi Miike graduated from Yokohama Vocational School of Broadcast and Film (Yokohama Hoso Eiga Senmon Gakko), under the guidance of renowned filmmaker Shohei Imamura, the founder and Dean. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takashi_Miike [Jan 2005]
2005, Jan 17; 14:59 ::: 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die (2004) - Steven Jay Schneider
1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die (2004) - Steven Jay Schneider [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die (2004) Steven Jay Schneider, Geoff Andrew, Linda Badley, Kathryn Bergeron, Joanna Berry, Edward Buscombe, Garrett Chaffin-Quiray, Tom Charity, Travis Crawford, Adrian Danks, Ethan De Seife
From booklist
Film lovers seeking critical guidance more discerning than daily newspaper reviews but less daunting than scholarly journal articles depend on a handful of critics who write about rarefied films for a general audience. 1001 Movies You Must See before You Die puts a user-friendly mask on the serious thought animating its effort to create a roster of indispensable films and rather belies the erudition of its well-qualified contributors. The chosen 1,001 are chronologically listed, from the surreal sf short A Trip to the Moon (1902) to Russian Ark and chicago (both 2002). This list has been compiled with an eye to historical importance and popular acclaim, which explains the presence of such critically suspect crowd-pleasers as Saturday Night Fever, Top Gun, and E.T. Since Chantal Akerman's nearly four-hour Jeanne Dielman and the Czech psychedelic farce Sedmikrasky (Daisies) also appear, it can't, however, be accused of pandering to popular taste. Attractive design, incorporating stills from most chosen titles, makes the volume a browser's delight as well as a useful guide for casual viewers and film buffs alike. Gordon Flagg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reservedProduct Description:
"You played it for her, Sam. Now, play it for me." Everybody loves a good movie, and Casablanca is just one of the classics described in this, the ultimate book about movies! This volume's expert team of authors spans a full century of production, concisely describing 1001 of the best films from around the world. The listings are dramatically augmented with memorable photos, both in color and black and white. The book is a chrono-logical survey covering the best cinematic dramas, comedies, westerns, musicals, suspense and horror films, gangster classics, films noir, sci-fi epics, documentaries, and adaptations of novels and stage plays. Starting in 1902 with the French production, Le voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon) and the famous 1903 American short, The Great Train Robbery, this immensely enjoyable read moves forward chronologically. Film fans review the 1920s silent classics of D. W. Griffith and the comedies of Chaplin and Keaton, then go on to the era of sound films, beginning in 1927 with Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer. Soon to follow were von Sternberg's 1931 classic with Marlene Dietrich, Der Blaue Engel (The Blue Angel), the Bela Lugosi portrayal of Dracula, and the inimitable King Kong. Other highlights from the 1930s include screwball comedies like It Happened One Night and Bringing Up Baby, the elegant song-and-dance fests that paired Astaire and Rogers, the crazy antics of the Marx Brothers, and the classic Warner Brothers gangster films where James Cagney, George Raft, and Edward G. Robinson were brought to justice in the final reel. In the 1940s, The Maltese Falconand Casablanca made Humphrey Bogart a household name--and spanning nearly a half-century, from the 1930s to the '80s, Alfred Hitchcock's suspense classics thrilled millions. Also well represented are the post-World War II European New Wave directors, including Pasolini, Fellini, and Antonioni from Italy, Resnais and Truffaut from France, and many others. Here too in words and photos are the classic westerns, from epics starring John Wayne and Gary Cooper to those in which Clint Eastwood shot it out with the bad and the ugly. --And certainly not to be overlooked are the great musicals, from Singin' in the Rain to Chicago.Readers who open this book to any page will find a major film described with a complete list of credits, an essay summarizing its story line and screen-history, and still shots of some of the film's memorable scenes. At the back of the book, both an alpha-betical index and a genre index will help readers find any film they're looking for in a hurry. Collectors of DVDs and video tapes will find this volume a must for their bookshelf, but even casual moviegoers will enjoy browsing through this big, entertaining reference book. For students of cinema, for discerning film buffs, for general moviegoers, and for readers who enjoy reminiscing over unforgettable lines of dialogue, here's the best place to start.
2005, Jan 16; 17:10 ::: Amor Victorious
Amor Victorious (1602-03) - Caravaggio (1573-1610)
In 1601 Caravaggio painted the "Love Triumphant," for the collection of the Marquis Vincenzo Giustiniani. The latter is reputed to have kept it hidden behind a curtain to show only to his friends, as it was seen as a blatant celebration of sodomy. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erotic_art#Modern_erotica [Jan 2005]
2005, Jan 15; 12:53 ::: Clovis Trouille (1889 - 1975)
Religieuse Italienne Fumant la Cigarette (1944) - Clovis Trouille
via http://www.artnet.com/magazine/news/artnetnews2/artnetnews4-18-4.asp [Jan 2005]Born Camille Clovis Trouille, 24 October 1889, in France. Died 1975.
A Sunday painter who worked as a restorer and decorator of department store mannequins.
Trained at the Ecole de Beaux-Arts, Amiens, 1905-1910.
His service in World War I gave him a lifelong hatred of the military, expressed in his first major painting Remberence (1931). The painting depicts a pair of wraith-like soldiers clutching white rabbits, an airborne female contortionist throwing a handful of medals, and the whole scene being blessed by a cross-dressing cardinal.
This violent contempt for the church as a corrupt institution provided Trouille with the inspiration for decades of pictorial blasphemies - 1944's Dialogue at the Carmel shows a skull wearing a crown of thorns being used as an ornament.
Trouille's other common subjects were: sex - Lust (1959), a portrait of the Marquis de Sade sitting in the foreground of a landscape decorated with a tableau of various perversions; and a madly egoistic bravado employed as self-satire.
The Mummy shows a mummified woman coming to life as a result of a shaft of light falling on a large bust of Trouille. The Magician (1944) has a self-portrait satisfying a group of swooning women with a wave of his magician's wand. My Tomb (1947) shows Trouille's tomb as a focal point of corruption and depravity in a graveyard.
After his work was seen by Louis Aragon and Salvador Dalí, Trouille was declared a surrealist by André Breton - a label that Trouille (like many artists) accepted only as a way of gaining exposure, not having any real sympathy with the Surrealism movement.
The simple style and lurid colouring of Trouille's paintings echo the lithographic posters used in advertising in the first half of the 20th Century.
His portrait of a reclining nude shown from behind entitled "Oh Calcutta, Calcutta!" - a pun in French - was chosen as the title for the 1969 musical revue. (The French phrase "oh quel cul t'as" translates roughly as "oh what a lovely arse you have".) --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clovis_Trouille [Jan 2005]
2005, Jan 15; 11:57 ::: Retroraunch.com
RetroRaunch is about bringing the tasty, nasty, wild, wacky, outrageous, shocking, beautiful, erotic and utterly special soft and hardcore porn from the past into the high-tech present of the Internet. http://www.retroraunch.com/main.htm [Jan 2005]
We know you've been around the block when it comes to adult entertainment, and so have we. After seeing for ourselves the busy, messy, overdone, irritating sites out there, blighted with advertising and tripping over themselves to give you (sell you) more, more, more! - we elected to give you something better. We have deliberately chosen to keep the site design simple, spare, and focused on giving you a unique and very erotic experience.
It isn't easy. Unlike the rest of the adult entertainment market, we don't have the luxury of porn manufacturers churning out boatloads of images day after day to feed the bottomless appetite of Internet. We can't just pick up the phone and tell them to ship another gross of cd's with a thousand pictures each. We have to research and investigate... telephone, e-mail, travel, and wait. When we do find sources for our images, we often have to sort, by hand, through thousands of pictures dumped in boxes. Then scan them in, one by one. Not to mention that the quality of the images is often so low that we have to marshall all the image-editing skills we have just to make them viewable. --http://www.retroraunch.com/statement.htm [Jan 2005]
Introducing linearity to jahsonic.com: click the [next >>] button!
2005, Jan 15; 11:14 ::: The story of filmThe story of film in 40 directors (1899 - 2004) [...]
From Georges Méliès to François OzonThe story of erotic film in 40 films (1955 - 2004) [...]
From Garden of Eden (1955) to 9 songs (2004)
2005, Jan 15; 00:02 ::: Anatomy of Hell (2004) - Catherine Breillat
Anatomy of Hell (2004) - Catherine Breillat [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Provocative filmmaker Catherine Breillat (Romance) returns with her latest and most controversial film yet! Over four nights in a house in the middle of nowhere, a woman on the verge pays a handsome stranger to watch her "where she's unwatchable." Confronting the unspeakable, discovering the unshowable, and sharing the unsharable, they learn the real secrets of how men truly see women, and how women truly see themselves. Pushing the boundaries of cinema, Anatomy of Hell will only be available in its original theatrical, unrated version. French w/ English Subtitles. --via Amazon.com
2005, Jan 14; 22:52 ::: Manji (1964) - Yasuzo Masumura
Manji (1964) - Yasuzo Masumura [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Lurid. Hysterical. Gaping improbabilities and plot holes. A must see, though, for one reason: Sonoko Kakiuchi, long-faced, thick-lipped, huge-eyed, the woman in "Sunna no onna" made the same year as "Manji" and the bizarre nurse in "Tanin no kao" made two years later. The other woman, despite a long, somewhat distinguished career, here looks and acts like an Elizabeth Taylor stand-in tumbled out of Tennessee Williams land. See it for Sonoko Kakiuchi, here the protagonist and in color. (This corrects my embarrassing typo below. Couldn't see any other way to do it. I can read both the simple titles, so no excuse. Manji, by the way, is the Buddhist cross on the dvd box.) --frankgaipa via http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058326/ [Jan 2005]
2005, Jan 14; 21:07 ::: Secretary (2002)
Maggie Gyllenhaal in Secretary (2002)
Secretary is a 2002 film, directed by Steven Shainberg and starring Maggie Gyllenhaal and James Spader.
Lee Holloway (Gyllenhaal) has recently been released from a mental institution after her penchant for self-injury resulted in a near-fatal injury. Determined to adjust to society, she learns to type and is hired as secretary to attorney E. Edward Grey (Spader). Grey's disdainful attitude toward his employee turns out to be a boon to both of them, as what initially was a rather strained professional relationship becomes both closer and more personal as it progressively takes on greater BDSM elements. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_%28movie%29 [Jan 2005]
2005, Jan 14; 15:04 ::: The Erotic Print SocietyThe Erotic Print Society was founded in 1993 by two art dealers who had curated the first exhibition of historic and contemporary erotic art in London eight years before.
Now with considerable knowledge of the field they recognised that public access to great examples of the genre was becoming more and more limited - increasingly the domain of restricted museum collections and that of private collectors. At the same time they saw that there was, in the UK at least, no real showplace for the erotic works of contemporary artists.
The general purpose of the Society is to bring these works to a wider audience and within financial reach of most collectors. Erotica is one of the last frontiers of art to be crossed and a serious investigation is long overdue. Sex is a significant human activity and from prehistoric times artists have given their own creative interpretation of the subject.
Erotic art is an intimate and personal examination of human sexuality in all its rich diversity, a means of creative expression, whether serious or light-hearted, provocative or inspirational. Western society tends to suppress erotic imagery on the one hand, while on the other it exploits it to the full, whether in advertising or pornography. To say that erotic art celebrates, and pornography exploits, sex would be to over-simplify a complex issue.
So what does the Society do? Essentially it publishes limited editions of both rare and contemporary erotic art using the highest standards of printing techniques and the most appropriate quality of paper for each edition. These editions can usually be purchased in elegant card folders or luxury, hand-crafted portfolios. The prints can be preserved in their portfolios or framed. Frequently the accompanying texts of the original editions will have been published in a foreign language. The Society commissions translations in English for its own editions, often for the very first time. We also publish anthologies of the work of single artists in book-form in a limited and a popular edition.
The Erotic Print Society offers you an unprecedented opportunity to create your own special collection of classic works from the golden age of erotic art and also new works by exciting contemporary talent. --http://www.eroticprints.org [Jan 2005]
2005, Jan 14; 14:20 ::: Woman (2000) - China Hamilton
Woman (2000) - China Hamilton [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Product Description:
Woman, a superbly produced collector's volume of erotic fine art, consists of eighty breathtaking, handmade prints, each with the air of mystery and intrigue that are the hallmark of photographer China Hamilton's distinctive style. The book's representations of woman's essence are alternately gentle, curious, and confrontational as Hamilton offers a compelling insight into the forces binding together the female form and erotic art. This collection - drawn from ten years' work - reflects the artist's fascination with the intrinisic beauty of women and the kaleidoscopic range of their contrasting emotions. Ranging from soft and gentle images to darker explorations of their erotic soul, Woman is a creative journey of wonder, revelation, and obsession.Hamilton, as much an artist in the darkroom as he is behind the camera, brings together some of his finest work in a beautiful volume which will be irresistible to the connoisseur of photography or erotic art.
2005, Jan 14; 10:27 ::: Sade (2000) - Benoît Jacquot
Sade (2000) - Benoît Jacquot [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Amazon.com
"Only in excess can one find liberty." Oh, that's right--the Marquis de Sade wasn't just a freaky-deaky sex fiend, he was also a philosopher. And that's the side illuminated in Sade, a marvelously chewy look at an episode from the life of the indecent marquis. In 1794, after the Revolution, Robespierre has imprisoned Sade in a comfortable old nunnery, along with some royalists. Daniel Auteuil's superb performance in the title role brings a lifetime of scandalous living to Sade's face, and he makes the man utterly unapologetic. By the time Sade deflowers a fascinated young woman, the act is more a defiant political statement (for both of them) than a naughty roll in the hay. This is another good one from director Benoît Jacquot (A Single Girl, Seventh Heaven), whose work always manages to be calm but passionate. It certainly tops Quills, another look at the enigma of Sade. --Robert HortonSummary: Well-made but a suspect thesis
While there is much to admire in the performances, writing, and photography (especially the way the Marquis' sometimes greenish-black hue contrasts to Emilie's fair skin), the central thesis of the film is a little hard to swallow. Setting the story right at the nadir of revolutionary excess, where the nobility are being decapitated in the hundreds, the film-makers advance the notion that all the raping, maiming, and torturing in Sade's books are merely a joyous upwelling of the Life Forces amidst so much horror, like William Blake writing in a refugee camp. Yet this can only be made by transforming Sade from the bloodthirsty, all-screwing libertine that he was into a supercilious chattering class of one, a Cassandra who sees life even in the maggots swarming in his prison cell. Glimpses of his work are few and almost coy, while the sexual adventures of the other detainees get the full scan as neurotic and hypocritical. However they did recapture the dark wit that suffused Justine, and it that respect the Marquis is almost sympathetic. ----Alcibiade del Mezzogiorno via http://us.imdb.com/Title?0217019 [Jan 2005]Perhaps unsurprisingly, de Sade's life and writings have proved irresistible to filmmakers. While there are surely an uncountable number of pornographic films based on his themes, here are some of the more mainstream movies based on his history or his works of fiction:
2005, Jan 14; 09:30 ::: Sade's life and writings in film [...]--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquis_de_Sade#Films [Jan 2005]
- Marat/Sade, a film of the Peter Weiss play (1966)
- Justine and Juliet, aka Marquis de Sade: Justine (1968)
- Eugenie...The Story of Her Journey into Perversion aka Philosophy in the Boudoir (1969)
- De Sade (1969)
- Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975)
- Cruel Passion (1977)
- Marquis (1989)
- Dark Prince (1996)
- Sade (1999)
- Quills (2000)
Simone de Beauvoir and other writers have later attempted to locate traces of a radical freedom philosophy in de Marquis de Sade's writings, preceding that of existentialism by some 150 years. The surrealists admired him as one of their precursors, and Guillaume Apollinaire called him "the freest spirit that has yet existed". The Japanese writer Yukio Mishima wrote a play titled Madame de Sade. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquis_de_Sade#Appraisal [Jan 2005]
2005, Jan 14; 09:22 ::: Appraisal for Sade [...]Thought of as the effort of humanity to liberate the imagination as an act of insurrection against society, surrealism dates back to, or finds precedents in, the alchemists, possibly Dante, various heretical groups, Hieronymus Bosch, Marquis de Sade, Charles Fourier, Comte de Lautreamont and Arthur Rimbaud. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrealism#Impact_of_Surrealism [Jan 2005]
2005, Jan 14; 08:52 ::: Roots of surrealism [...]
2005, Jan 13; 22:00 ::: Avon Theaters, New York (late 1960s - 1983)Avon specialized in high frequency adult films that premiered at their string of theaters pocketed throughout Times Square.
Avon Theaters first gained a widespread reputation when they gave Andy Warhol films including My Hustler (1965), Vinyl (1965) and Flesh (1968) their first big commercial runs when they were still considered racy in the mid 1960s.
The homosexual elements of underground films proved to be a boxoffice draw, so Stella and Murray opened New York's first all-male theater, the Park Miller, on 43rd Street between 6th Avenue and Broadway. The Park Miller cut a striking figure in the gay lib Mattachine Society era of the late 1960s, with its three balconies and heavy sexual activity. It premiered Pat Rocco's softcore Hollywood shorts, and also presented packages of Kenneth Anger films for the cruise minded audience. --Bill Landis and Michelle Clifford, http://www.alphabluearchives.com/avon.html [Jan 2005]
Avon Theaters took a cue from Oh! Calcutta!'s nudity on the Broadway stage and integrated it with Murray's grainy memories of pre-Castro Havana live sex shows. Avon struck Deuce gold when they presented New York's first live exhibition of male-female sexual activity. Early porno chic superstars Jamie Gillis, Marc ("Mr 10-1/2") Stevens and Tina and Jason Russell initiated their careers with hardcore loops and these simulated shows. You cold drop a quarter in a peep booth and then walk down 42nd Street to see the same people live on stage. Absurd socially redeeming interludes like Jamie Gillis naked, reciting Shakespeare, were used as a shield against vice raids.
By 1973 the live shows turned hardcore. --Bill Landis and Michelle Clifford, http://www.alphabluearchives.com/avon.html [Jan 2005]
2005, Jan 13; 18:56 ::: Wild Japan film festival UK
February, March and April in cinemas across the UK. --http://www.wildjapan.co.uk [Jan 2005]
see also: japanese cinema, cult films
2005, Jan 13; 18:56 ::: K.H. Brown via http://www.kinocite.co.ukThe central gimmick - with the action punctuated by shots from the vagina's POV - feels somehow quintessentially French, giving the piece more intellectual gravitas than the likely American model of Deep Throat. The whole alternative title/subtitle Le Sexe qui Parle is replete with double meaning, "the sex" referring to both gender and female genitalia, and allusions to notions to French feminist and psychoanalytic theories of "the sex which cannot speak" - i.e. the female.
[...]
Nevertheless, you just know that someone, somewhere out there is going to discover the film and produce an academic paper exploring Pussy Talk's discourses around self and alterity and masculine constructions of female identity, making heavy-handed use of lines like the one where the pussy informs the reporter to come closer - "don't worry, I don't bite" - or constructing a history of similarly themed entries from Ever Ready the detachable penis-cum-phallus in the 1920s to the present as a history of meconnaissance in the porno genre… K.H. Brown via http://www.kinocite.co.uk/16/1620.php [Jan 2005]
Known as El Topo while writing for iofilm K H Brown is the founder of Kinocite. He likes most sorts of cinema, so long as it's interesting - mainstream Hollywood need not apply. --http://www.kinocite.co.uk/contributors/1.php [Jan 2005]
2005, Jan 13; 17:16 ::: Il Conformista/The Conformist (1970) - Bernardo Bertolucci
Il Conformista/The Conformist (1970) - Bernardo Bertolucci [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
The subtlety of composition, decor, and atmosphere within a single shot denotes the presence of a master. The time is the 30s, revealed in dress, wallpaper, style of couch. The slanting rays of the sun add to the pent-up erotic tension of a moment soon to erupt in a sexual encounter on the floor. --Film As a Subversive Art (1974) - Amos Vogel
The Conformist is a 1970 film by Bernardo Bertolucci starring Jean-Louis Trintignant and Stefania Sandrelli, based on the novel Il Conformista by Alberto Moravia. In it a weak-willed Italian man becomes a fascist flunky who goes abroad to arrange the assassination of his old teacher, who is now a political dissident. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Conformist [Jan 2005]
The Conformist (1970) criticised Fascist ideology, examining the relationship between nationhood and nationalism, as well as issues of popular taste and collective memory. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernardo_Bertolucci [Jan 2005]
Viele italienische Filmemacher verbinden mit dieser Idee der Dekadenzauffällig oft auch zusätzlich eine latente Homosexualität (wie Roberto Rossellini bereits in Roma, citta aperta / Rom, offene Stadt, 1945, und Bernardo Bertolucci in Il conformista / Der große Irrtum, 1970) oder einen destruktiven (Pseudo)-Sadomasochismus (wie Liliana Cavani in ihrem finsteren Psychodrama Il portiere di notte / Der Nachtportier, 1973). --Marcus Stiglegger Sexualität und Macht: Sadomasochismus im Film (2002) via http://www.ikonenmagazin.de/artikel/sm_im_film.htm [Jan 2005]
Keywords: Friedrich Nietzsche, Michel Foucaults , Georges Batailles, Marquis de Sade, Adrian Lyne, Elizabeth McNeil , Pauline Réage, Henry Miller, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Jean de Berg , Jess Franco, Cy Endfield , Claude Pierson, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Luis Bunuel , Alejandro Jodorwosky, Roland Topor, Fernando Arrabal, Peter Fleischmann, Monika Treuts, Elfi Mikeschs, Barbet Schroeder, Jean Francois Davy, Just Jaeckin , Michael Reeves , Ken Russell , Tinto Brass, Roberto Rossellini , Bernardo Bertolucci , Liliana Cavani , Radley Metzger, José Benanzéraf , Gerard Damiano , Susan Sontag, Linda Williams , The Findlays, Roland Barthes , Nagisa Oshima, Ryu Murakami . --Marcus Stiglegger Sexualität und Macht: Sadomasochismus im Film (2002) via http://www.ikonenmagazin.de/artikel/sm_im_film.htm [Jan 2005]
