K.R.A.S. The Ken Russell Appreciation Society "Fullfrontalnus Illuminatio Mea"

Ann-Margaret 's Pin Up Couture in Tommy - Designs by Shirley Russell

2012-01-23T23:17:00.012Z

(And we are back folks. While I still don't believe he blasted off for infinity, it would be a disloyalty to Ken's staggering legacy and the collective consciousness if we just stopped or tapered off here. I'm now blogging about Ken indefinitely and as often as possible. Please go to Ken's official website, Savage Messiah, and his Official Facebook Page for news including links. Back to Tommy. Back to Baba. Back to Ken. A tired and paranoid planet needs his joy and we miss him while we celebrate.)

(We welcome you to Bernie's Holiday Camp and some of the most marvellous 1950's reproduction clothing ever created. As usual a huge thanks to America Buddha and their screen caps library of Ken Russell's film of Tommy.)

With so much reproduction vintage and Pin Up clothing everywhere you look these days it is easy for even bona fide fashionistas to forget what any drag queen, retro-burlesque artist or clothes horse collector can tell you; that less than a decade ago all these great swing dresses, crinolines, corsets and rompers you see today were very hard to find and impossibly expensive. Once upon a beaded cardigan, if you actually found your size it often fell apart or had to be altered. A magazine would show a handmade item and you'd never be able to find it. You'd see a picture of a Shaheen wing bust dress or a Cole of California playsuit, dream of having it recreated custom made and quickly find that dream was only for the very wealthy. Now with the internet and especially ETSY, vintage repro and custom CAN come true for anyone. Of course to stand out in a sea of Heartbreaker and Hell Bunny, the best design inspirations come from films and easily the best reproduction 1950's couture in any film is seen in the childhood sequences in Tommy.

When Shirley Russell, the Edith Head of British costume design, created these masterpieces, it was the mid 1970s and just as she'd flawlessly and exuberantly brought the whimsical late 1920s and 30s to life in The Boyfriend, she hearkened back to the British 1950s with equal aplomb. It is clearly evident from many art, fashion, music and films from the1970s, that both the 1920s and the 1950s saw major artistic revivals. Yet where Grease and America Graffiti are all itchy lettermen sweaters and stiff crinolines, the designs for Tommy are fluid and sensual. And while Cha Cha DiGregorio's prom dress (worn magnificently by the recently departed Annette Charles) is one very hot masterpiece (complete with attached matching panties) the rest of Grease features mostly costumes that scream "1950's costume" with the clothes literally making the characters what they are. Unlike Olivia New John's black spandex, Shirley's costumes for Ann melt into the scenery and are actually wearable, making Ann's character, Nora Walker especially believable. (Remember both films are musicals with Tommy having zero dialogue). Nora dramatically ages in the film and goes from the teenager in love wearing tweedy fell pants to pensive early 1950s British Post war widow to nouveau riche chrome camp goddess to doomed alcoholic cult greeter.

( Surely in heaven starring as Aldonza in Ken's film of "Man of La Mancha' with Jesus Christ as Don Quixote: Annette Charles 1948-2011)

As for Annie Margaret she is, along with Rita Moreno, perhaps the only true "singer, dancer, actress" in Hollywood history. Her talent as an actress in Tommy goes leaps and bounds beyond her fabulous hourglass figure and what most of her peers could have done with the role. Ken, known to have a relatively casual coach of actors on the set, was given by AM a performance that includes camp, sadness, adroitness and a female vibration so powerful that no actress should attempt the role on screen again.

Ann-Margaret's Pin Up Couture Wardrobe From Tommy:

1.Palest Mint Pastel Green Tropical Print Swing Dress with Crossover Bust

2.Sky Blue Skirted Gingham Halter Romper/Swimsuit with matching headscarf

3.Pale Blue Floral Ball Gown with Pink Roses on an Organza Overlay (my personal favourite)

4.FlameRed fold over origami wing bust swing dress with spaghetti straps, Bow belt with long centre sash and white roses on the skirt.

5.Cornflower Blue Atomic Galaxy print swing dress with elbow length sleeves and plunging portrait collar neckline

6.Bright Red Asymmetrically tiered pleat crepe floor length Christmas hostess gown 3/4 sleeves and plunging Statement Neckline

(all five dresses are worn with a crinoline for volume. Enlarge pictures to see the details)

1. The Holiday Camp arrival dress is more a look. Nora has a shell hat, crochet gloves, dazzling day jewellery, ivory open toe pumps and a pink handbag (see first photo above). As it was in this era, the working class of both sexes in Britain all dressed smartly. Yet she's also a widow and a single Mum who is still very young, romantic and justifiably naive. The Green Coat has already chatted her up ("I'm in chalet number 11") and she's not even unpacked. The dress has that wonderful wrap bust that flatters anyone with a subtle floral print. This ensemble says "I'm young and fetching but not easy".

Ken now has Nora in the ultimate Pin Up Playsuit; wholesome and staying joyously a float with Frank's eager help. This is the most light hearted gingham romper ever! Though seen only in retro-style Pin Up photography these days, you can actually swim in one of these and most are so well made that they still hold up. Nora's is in my preferred playsuit cut as small waist, wide hips and long legs like I have don't rock a boy cut nearly as well as an attached full skirted micro-mini. During the "Lovely Legs Contest" which Nora wins, Ken ensures that the other bathers (most likely married women) wear boy cut suits while she stands out almost like a water ballerina, the only one in a matching head scarf . As Tommy cheers nearby and Frank Hobbs passive aggressively comes on to her she looks particularly vulnerable.
(I reversed the order of the last two pictures so you can see the suit clearer)

We now cut to a glittering ballroom with Nora in a lavish formal evening gown. She is getting caught up in being desired after being alone for so long. Once again Nora is dressed as the picture of class; her hair is swept up and decorated with a pink rose to compliment the floral embroidery on her organza gown and set off her dazzling earrings. The gown is floor length with wide regal shoulders and a flattering mid cut neckline. The look can easily be misread as "Easter Lamb" after she's so easily seduced in her holiday chalet later that night but she clearly told Frank "until I'm one my heart won't rest..." This scene breaks the "Frank Hobbs is evil and Nora Walker is a victim myth" regarding Tommy and establishes that these are two people falling in love. (In this scene you see a haze which looks like cigarette smoke but it was in reality the pier itself they were filming on had caught on fire! The whole crew was evacuated needless to say and Ken included the exterior shots in the final part of the film.

And the newly marrying war widow bride wore scarlet with pride! Love how Ken has Nora bouncy and cheerful in flaming red the day after her one day relationship was consummated. No walk of shame here. The dress is a classic take on the Shaheen wing bust but with the points worn delicately up. Between the batik scattered white roses and the long sash (rarely seen in reproductions today), black hose and pumps, the whole ensemble (nearly sans jewellery) has that oriental minimalist feel so popular in the 1950s. Oliver Reed makes the ultimate ageing Ted down to the brothel creeper soles come to life with each swagger. Perhaps picking up psychically that his step father's ensuing folly will ultimately lead to a labyrinth of pain and mis-adventure for his young mind, Tommy loudly announces the plan for his own camp "when I'm big" to his oblivious folks.

Now he is deaf, now he is dumb, now he is blind and now his guardians to save face after shocking him into severe autism. Russell has the family inside a tunnel walking in step like troops. What better way to paint the image of the "perfect family" then outfits made from the same whimsical and carefree print?! I see sun eclipses, atomic looking nine pins, stars and all manner of merry futuristic things. I love how Nora is not corseted and pushed up and out. She's natural and feminine

With it's extensive ruffled portrait collar and seemingly endless pleated tiers, this lavish but stiff Christmas gown signifies that Nora is now fully entrenched in putting on appearances. This is the diamond accentuated transition piece for now, after this scene, nearly all of Nora's clothing will over the top/ nouveau riche and decadent.

In honour of those who tirelessly researching, sewing , creating and thus carrying on the loving tradition of Shirley Russell (aka The High Priestess and Alchemist of Vintage Costume), I've included a list of what I feel are today's première bespoke and Pin Up clothing revivalists:
(All made in the UK and the USA of course.)

Fables By Barrie Made in San Diego. I am confident that there is nowhere on earth with more beautiful and dazzling whimsy and such flawless customer service. My Tolie Du Jouy one piece will be rockin this summer!

Dainty Rascal Reproduction Vintage does not get any better outside of Pinewood Studios. Almost a dozen of Marilyn Monroe dresses lovingly recreated are just the start-Suzy Berricone can do anything. Expect her to be a major player in the international fashion someday. Made in beautiful Sonoma County.

Tara Starlet Creates the UK's premier vintage reproduction clothing. Whereas many of the big names in Pin Up Clothing like PUG go for a hyper-buxom 1950s Varga look, Tara Starlet offers clothing for the more mysterious, sensible and wholesome. Designs are historical (Land Army dungarees), professional (30s and 40s suits you can wear to the office) and of course Sailor Pants in a dozen colours. Clothing for all sizes and body types UK sizes 6 (US 4) through 16 (US 14).

In Ken's Spirit...

2011-12-06T06:22:00.001Z

I am thankful for many things and must acknowledge two of them this morning. Firstly that Ken Russell left a very clear example for artists and those interested in his art alike to follow: be yourself. Religion or gurus can help guide you but the ultimate purveyor is yourself and the art that moves and inspires you. All influences should be seamless and having regrets while being unapologetic is part of life. Originality DOES still exist. And secondly I am everlastingly thankful for my number one fans and friends Par Nordstrom and Grace Isme. I am so thankful for you both. Your generosity and kindness, loyalty and humour means so much to me.

(We keep missing Ken below with best friend and folk singer Barry Lowe the Oliver Reed of Grosewood Films)

This alone, if nothing, is worth your memory. Ken Russell....

2011-12-04T05:21:00.001Z

1. Did not die in hospital. He was at his home sleeping peacefully.

2. Had more than "one hit film".

3. Worked continually and prolifically in stage, photography, film, television, writing and journalism in a career spanning well over sixty years.

4. Was thee FIRST major Hollywood/ arthouse/mainstream artist to radically and intelligently challenge the Catholic Church. No one has come close since.

5. Broke down barriers for women, Gays, lesbians, bisexual, transgendered and straight people both on and behind the screen.

6. Uncredited major influence in The Cell, Black Swan, Amadeus, Immortal Beloved, Moulin Rouge and countless other films.

7. Disproportionately attacked by mainstream media and powerful critics who often claimed scenes existed that simply were not in his films.

8. Catalyst for sparking the revival of Edward Elgar.

9. Largely responsible for inaugurating the BBC as a (once anyway) world class creative force in the moving image.

10. Supported other artists throughout his entire career.

11. Only major Hollywood director to see a major Hollywood studio release banned for almost 40 decades in not only its original but it's edited form as well.

12. Was thee FIRST major Hollywood/ arthouse/mainstream artist to radically and intelligently mock Nazi Germany and Nazi sympathizers.

13. Pioneer of the big budget music video.

14. NOT THE END!

My Greatest Honour As a Performer. Thank you Ken Russell

2011-12-03T07:43:00.002Z

In sadness there is hidden treasures. A few days ago, I joined the London Times and was shocked with joy and honoured to see that in August of 2008, Ken Russell kindly gave me a long mention, (the third paragraph from the end) in one of his lively columns. Ken's mention is an honour, especially as a "Bulgarian" so please share it with me. (Can't link to his piece because the Times makes you pay.) Truly, I had no idea. I was working non stop in London and had little time to read The Times despite knowing of Ken's column. I may not have met him but to know him is to love him.

Thank you Ken, happy I could entertain you and Lisi.

My adventures in cyberspace, where it's all about me

Ken Russell, London Times
August 26 2008 12:01AM

On my first exploration of the internet I found myself represented in myriad guises, some of them true

To me the computer might as well be something to play with in the bathtub. But now the siren call of knobs and whistles and a vast territory down the rabbit hole beckons. I've heard that they're selling a picture of me on eBay with a dubious signature. It occurs to me that I might be able to auction off my recently extracted back molar. Time for homage to the great Moloch in my upstairs office.

Like Tommy, the eponymous hero of my film, hooked up inside the Acid Queen's Iron Maiden, I am more or less plugged in by my wife to the basic tools: mouse, cursor, keyboard, the Google search engine.

Looking out of the window for inspiration, I find myself confronted by a gaggle of garden gnomes. So I type in “gnomes” and end up in Elftown.com, where I am cast as a 6ft elf of bluish tint who lives in a magic tree. I immediately refuse all promotions to town council or garbage collection and assert my identity as a singing bard named Mugwump. Let the trolls do the hard work.

Then I'm back to Google. Typing in “goddesses”, I am pulled into a wonderful world of postage stamp-sized pictures of semi-clad, winged women and sacred feminine images. Hmm, this woman with a head like the Chrysler Building looks interesting. A click leads to House of Mercado.com - “an entertainment boutique”. Images slide past of an avant-garde dance troupe dressed in shiny silver techno-suits.

I'm starting to feel queasy. My old reference points are dissolving. I've punched another button leading me to clipmarks.com and the scientific news that visible mutations in the iris of the human eye are linked to poor impulse control. Quick look in the mirror. My iris looks like a powderpuff. Is that good?

Next click to “actors”. I punch in Oliver Reed, and there is a banned still from the nude wrestling scene in Women in Love showing the continuity girl holding a ruler and admonishing Oliver for disappearing behind a screen between takes to give nature a helping hand in a contest of manhoods with Alan Bates.

Now let's try Tony Perkins, whom I worked with on Crimes of Passion. Click and there he is, marrying Ken and wife No2 on the Queen Mary during a break in filming. He was all for the idea but was not ordained. I informed him that he could become a fully paid-up minister of the California Life Church for $5. Bogus? I'm afraid not. As I found out when I tried to divorce my wife sometime later, it was totally legal and binding.

What does the web say about me? Let's start with a Ken Russell reference at something called www.jibjab.com, posted by “dan”. Oh, dear. It's an animated collage of Barbra Streisand and me dancing in hula skirts and coconut bras in Hawaii, fondling our belly buttons and each other. Disturbing yet compelling. Both our bodies have chest hair.

Here I am on YouTube, on Rutland Weekend Television: Pommy - “a spoof of Ken Russell's Tommy” by Monty Python's Neil Innes and Eric Idle. I'm dancing in tight trousers and 6in platform heels, demanding obeisance to my films and preening in song: “I'm a concrete jungle boy”. Catchy tune.

How about the video on YouTube and www.music.songtoday.com - Today is Boring Film Society: the Devils by Ken Russell? Twenty-year-olds pouring out of a viewing room, being interviewed for their thoughts. A charming vote of confidence from an appealing lad: “Ken Russell - I like him - he's a f***ed-up individual.”

Which leads me to the excellent blog by Mark Kermode on bbc.co.uk/blog called Devils Across the Deep Blue Sea, exhorting the DVD release of my film The Devils as a British masterpiece that has been withheld from the public. Brings tears to the eyes.

And here's a site - a myspace.com page using my name! Calls himself “Uncle Ken”. I'm an 81-year-old film-maker with a new autobiography coming out (true) and whose interests are classical music, psychosexuality, crazy zooms and primary colours (also true). Tony Perkins sings in a clip on the website; Joshua Ben Joseph plays while you read text. I'm getting mail from Pasolini, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Aldous Huxley and Alain Resnais! Very cool! Must write back...

Back to Google. My identity is fragmenting with excitement. My third ex-wife is suing her mother's dead lesbian ex-lover. My current wife Elise is lauded in songs all over iTube by several famous songwriters. And here's a love letter just for me in video! Though Shalt Have No Other Boobs Before Me - for Ken Russell. Amanda from Bulgaria, in black rubber, elucidates her “Ken Commandments” to the tune of Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries. She caresses a Ken doll representing her favourite director, pops its head off and tucks said head deep into her cream-puff cleavage. Apparently her site is popular. She also does strange things while lying on a red rubber ball, backside in air, gyrating to Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No2. Obviously a homage to my musical biopic Lisztomania.

Google again, and I begin to encounter lies. “Mighty Mark Lawson” reports that I did a striptease on TV to raise money for a film. Another story says that I'm directing a gangster film starring Robert Carlyle, Kevin Spacey, Ray Winstone and Twiggy (a dream cast, but not true). And that is not my signature on the autographed picture for sale on eBay - but I promise my actual, signed back molar will be for sale on eBay in a week. So start bidding.

After a day in cyberspace, I feel I could dive anywhere, find anything. I'm a natural for this sort of addictive treasure hunt. Here's a net interview in which I find fault with “reality - there's too much of it about”. Virtual reality - that's what I'm after.

Rejoice in Ken Russell while we miss him

2011-11-30T23:58:00.001Z

For those who want to pay their respects, you can visit Ken Russell's public Facebook page and leave a note. Many of us have been posting photos and sharing memories there. The best obituary so far, by a country mile can be found here at Indiewire, written by Ken's friend, Shade Rupe.

My beliefs entail that one stays as positive and happy about the dearly departed in the first days and weeks. I am of course very disappointed in the BBC (which both my husband I pay for yearly) and their bizarre behaviour in thus far lining NONE of Ken's work up for scheduled programming. Their attempt at a proper obituary was nothing sort of embarrassing. The Times of London also ran two thinly veiled hatchet pieces. Rubbish when The Sun and The Daily Mail actually come out looking better than the "top shelf" (whatever that means...) papers. Had there been no internet, as with Paul Robeson, I sadly belive that the mainstream media would have also erased Ken if they could.

Well too bad because now we have the web and great artists will never be obliterated again!!!
HURRAY!

Look at those who have lionized Ken and paid tribute: Pete Townshend, Ann Margret, Vanessa Redgrave, Glenda Jackson, Michael Winner, Martin Scorcese, Lord Melvyn Bragg, Roger Daltrey, Twiggy and Ben Kingsley to name a few. Particularly wonderful has been the many technicians, extras and writers who Ken worked with throughout his career who of their won volition are pausing to leave their sentiments and pay their respects on message boards and threads. Even those who took his Walthamstow Tech photography class before he was employed in the industry have paused to toast the man.

Ken Russell's death is the passing of a major and important artist who's influence is inexcusably unacknowledged and underrated.

More rejoicing to come!!

Ken Russell 1927-2011

2011-11-29T06:02:00.003Z

The day all the movie screens shed silver tears

2011-11-28T16:48:00.000Z

Ken Russell as a child

We miss Ken Russell. We are crying, we reminisce and wish perhaps selfishly that he could have lived for decades longer but we must first and foremost remember his family and his beloved wife Lisi are feeling immense loss and sadness now. They've lost a father, grandfather, uncle, former husband, best friend, colleague, lover, soulmate and life partner. For those of us who are in his extended fan family of millions we have must send love and light to Ken's spirit and those who were nearest and dearest to Ken now-they need it the most.

The past 24 hours have been a blur. I had a feeling something was out of balance before I went to bed on Sunday night via Facebook (actually I knew but did not want to believe). Later I had a dream in which I was in a night time cavernous but beautiful NYC library talking to an old friend Richelle Benway, my late cat Smokey alongside us. In the dream I was giving the concept for a wonderful screenplay in Russel-vision from start to finish. It is so wonderful that I will not divulge the plot because it is such a fantastic idea!

I woke up thinking about the upcoming Devils region 2 release. After so much editing I actually thought of suggesting to Ken that a PG13 version be created for secondary schools and those Christians who do not see R rated or above films like my friend who is a JW.. If the film is now to FINALLY take on its rightful incarnation including what will now be assuredly a long awaited FULL restoration (the cut to be released will not include the Rape of Christ scene or Sister Agnes "solo" but now we know it will be pushed forward) then why not drastically cut it on purpose for younger audiences? This may or not make any sense of course but in my studies of Ken's work I try to exam different concepts. Later I looked at my son's pjs covered in rockets, stars and planets and wondered why it all gets solid colours and taupe around 11 years or so and how Ken always wore bright and wonderful colours like a child his entire life. So I had a few things to tell him Monday morning. I've tried to maintain a friendly but respectful distance on Facebook. it has been an honour to be able to communicate with such a great artist while gleaning as much as I can from his generous spirit. I was just going to make a brief hello.

Then I read the news today. As if by media sanctioned "artistic miracle grow" the tributes and reappraisals have begun* as Ken Russell is "trending". Well he's been trending in our lives for ages folks. I know I'll never stop missing him so I honestly cannot comprehend how his loved ones must feel.

When his essence pours forth within this next week and in the months and years to come though we will all feel collectively proud and protective. We will be the ones to dispel the myths and point out the hidden treasures in Ken Russell's glorious oeuvre when people meet him in their own lives for the first time.

*When longtime semi-foe (after all his best friend Russ Meyer tried very hard but could never be Ken Russell) Roger Ebert was displaying a rather tacky silence I reminded him that he was being rather tacky. A few hours later a sketch (a poor one) appeared of Ken at Cannes in 1987. Apart from Ebert all the tributes have been deservedly loving.

2011-11-27T15:18:00.000Z

Shelagh Delaney 1939-2011

2011-11-21T05:42:00.003Z

Thanks to Ken Russell, the legendary film *A Taste of Honey, became so much more to me and I discovered the woman behind it; the great Shelagh Delaney. Being only a slight Smiths fan unlike all my friends and hubby who are nuts for them, I had no idea she'd been on the cover of Louder Than Bombs until just now.

This week Shelagh is being remembered and sadly only slightly celebrated here in the press *(TV has been rubbish; nothing at all) for the genius she will always be. To anyone woman who has ever written a play about the real world (especially of the working class) Shelagh flickered subliminally for decades along with Lorraine Hansberry her American compatriot. The GLBT community owes her a huge debt of gratitude as well for it was after sensing the auto pilot homophobia in Terence Rattigan's Variations on a Theme, that she was moved to write A Taste of Honey at the mind boggling age of 17. Feminists owe her a big debt too but then so does the average man who appreciates a smart and down to earth, earthy woman. It took a concerted group to create the sexual revolution and Shelagh work is the strongest effort waged in British theatre for certain. Nothing as yet has come along to properly take off where she let.

Shelagh will continue to inspire. Bless her.

*introduced to me by a now long lost beloved friend Danny Hardie Hardy last seen working at Boots on Bond Street and living in Nunnhead which is not unlike the Salford of London.

*That's the dumbed down world we live in. Ugly Elle MacPherson snorting Rhino powder and helping them all go extinct to Madonna's 25 million pound anti-Semitic sanitary towel advert. Shelagh Delany is too good for today's rubbish media

Remembrance Day

2011-11-11T05:42:00.003Z

Veterans Day and Remembrance Day is everyday.

Pray for peace and an end to greed everywhere.

Tommy 4: Delivery Room Glee

2011-11-07T13:26:00.002Z

There are no discernible dioramas in this scene but then I'd be hard pressed to find one in a medical environment even in an entire episode of Scrubs set to "Waiting For Godot". Hospitals are places that I thankfully thus far have spent little time in and I see them as sterile transition points or film sets for asylums. But Ken's Victory Day NHS has much going for it.

After the showgirls we have two lovely twin nurses and a "Father knows best/ every man doctor". As wasted teens, when the doctor would start to sing "a son" we'd all piss ourselves laughing. What a beautiful and realistic newborn Tommy is!

There certainly is a enough giggle and knock out gas to alter ones mood here.

(The heartbreaking dissolve into Captain Walker crashing with Ann-Margret and new born Tommy will be looked at independently at a latter post.)

Variety Reviews - J. Edgar and references Ken's "Women In Love " Nude Wrestling Scene!

2011-11-07T01:33:00.056Z

"True to Eastwood's understated nature, "J. Edgar" offers the "tasteful" treatment of such potentially salacious subject matter, though a more outre Oliver Stone-like approach might have made for a livelier film. With the exception of a few profanities (enough to land the pic an audience-limiting R rating) and a lone homoerotic wrestling scene so tame that Ken Russell's "Women in Love" feels like an X by comparison, the film could pass for something Warners would have released in an earlier era -- earlier even than many of the events depicted onscreen, as suggested by Tom Stern's cinematography, desaturated nearly to black-and-white."

Ken posted the Variety review a few days ago. Eastwood is a great director and DiCaprio is outstanding in all he does but they needed opera and burlesque theme here to REALLY show the world how gory J. Edgar Hoover was. (I actually own a hand signed letter (in pencil) hand typed by the late man himself. My much older late boyfriend's Uncle owned a bank in Omaha, Nebraska which was robbed and Hoover looked into it.)

What else to flesh out that classic example of "the guy screaming loudest in church about 'sinners' has the most to hide" dictum but raging colours and Lisztomania style eye candy? (I answer this myself below...) From what I've seen the script writer was simply too kind and yet here was probably the closest to an official US Nazi that the world will ever see!! Hoover would hound people for checking out library books or going to a concert he did not like-even if they had ZERO leftist affiliations. My script would have had Jean Seberg and Paul Robeson show up as avenging angels ( he destroyed both of their lives) and Jean would hold up a mirror to show Hoover's femininity and latent homosexuality and Robeson would show the reflection of Hoover's long rumoured black ancestry. (The fact he did not file his birth certificate until he was 43 is apparently glossed over as well.) Looks like Leo and Clint Eastwood did great with what they has to work with though even if it wasn't Alan Bates or Ollie Reed's phenomenal bodies framed by Ken's genius at understated psychological turmoil. And there I go stereotyping the man as glittery camp "visionary" blah blah blah! The film could have been closer to Ken's understated and comparatively (to some of his other films) sedate vision and benefited greatly as well I'm sure.

Ken in Conversation with Peter Blake January 15th on SKY Arts

2011-11-06T03:34:00.000Z

(Look at that duvet cover! Cath Kidston eat your heart out. Pete Blake from Ken Russell's 1962 Monitor film "Pop Goes The Easel".)

From BFI Online including film clips:

"For the first two years of his directing career for Monitor, Ken Russell had exclusively worked with shorter items of typically 10-15 minutes in length. By 1962, his reputation was such that Monitor's head Huw Wheldon was prepared to entrust him with a full-length programme. Elgar, broadcast on November 11, was the best known, but a few months earlier Russell made Pop Goes The Easel, a 44-minute set of variations on a theme of Pop Art.

The film was nominally a portrait of Peter Blake, Peter Phillips, Derek Boshier and Pauline Boty, who had all achieved substantial reputations in the art world despite still being in their twenties (Blake was the oldest at 29). But Russell's approach was far more visual and musical than verbal: although brief snippets of the artists' opinions are conveyed on the soundtrack, they're a relatively minor part of the overall texture, which seeks to hurl the viewer into their universe (much of it is shot in their own self-decorated flats) and drink deep from the wellspring of their influences.

As one would expect from the finished artworks, these were drawn from the contemporary world around them, and Russell duly constructs an elaborate, rapidly-cut rhythmic kaleidoscope of images of film and pop stars (Brigitte Bardot, Buddy Holly), fashion magazines, fast cars, politicians, the space race, guns, girls, American culture in general, and anything else that could be made to convey a similarly vitality. Jean-Luc Godard had been attempting similar film-collages in France, though Russell had arguably gone further by 1962.

He thinks nothing of cutting to a nightmare sequence featuring Boty pursued by a sinister wheelchair-bound villain down endless circling corridors (anticipating similar scenes in Bela Bartok two years later), or a dynamically shot and edited wrestling match enjoyed by all four artists, which in retrospect looks like a dry run for the equivalent scene in Women in Love (1969). It also marks the first appearance of a pinball machine in Russell's work, which would become an iconic object in Tommy (1975).

If Pop Goes the Easel looks dated to present-day eyes, that's both understandable and unavoidable, but in 1962 it was as cutting-edge in both content and form as anything the BBC had ever considered for broadcast on what was then its sole television channel. Accordingly, it was greeted with widespread controversy, something else that would become a familiar Russell trademark over the following years."

Michael Brooke

A Essay from Savage Messiah: A Ken Russell Site:

A biography of four pop artists (art not music). The title is a pun on the expression pop goes the weasel. This was the first documentary to treat pop-art as a serious movement rather than as a joke. Unfortunately the four artists Derek Boshier, Pauline Boty, Peter Blake and Peter Phillips and have not stood the test of time with only Blake retaining minor acclaim*. The four artists, who seem to live in a sort of commune, play with cowboy guns (edited with a cowboy firing back) or try and fail to look natural in front of the camera as they discuss their work.
The programme is introduced by Huw Wheldon and after this formal beginning it moves into mixtures of art and music (Buddy Holly etc), the film itself very much in pop art style.
The only really good scene is a dream sequence where Pauline Boty is chased round corridors by a woman in a wheelchair. The dark glasses and hands pulling the wheels forward (compare Tommy) are genuinely menacing.

Restricted by black-and-white Russell handles the colour artworks well, but compared with for example Savage Messiah the subjects are just too boring to carry the film and end up looking very pretentious. Tony Hancock's The Rebel from 1961 covers the same material satirically (with Oliver Reed as one of the artists). The party sequence is copied later in Song of Summer and there is a scene playing pinballs (Tommy). Glimpses of the future: Pauline Boty looks out the window like Glenda Jackson at the end of The Music Lovers, and sings I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles as if she was in The Boyfriend. All four go to a wrestling match which presages Women in Love. The photography throughout is beautiful, black and white atmospheric imagery reflecting Russell's background as a photographer.

Camera is by Ken Higgins (Elgar, French Dressing), editor is Alan Tyrer (Elgar). Derek Boshier would later appear in Dante's Inferno playing Millais, and Pauline Boty would appear in Bartok, more painters turned Russell actors. In a revival of the film twenty years on, the three male artists discuss the film- Pauline died a few years after the making of Pop Goes the Easel.

* A response to Fisher from a site visitor named Adam Smith:

You mention the 1991 revival which was orchestrated to coincide with a big Pop retrospective exhibition. One result of all this was a modest Pauline Boty revival, granting her long-overdue recognition. Not a star yet perhaps, but certainly recognised in the Pop world. Peter Blake has always enjoyed a wider currency, and is certainly no has-been. Peter Phillip's work is better-known than you might think (the cover of The Cars' Heartbeat City album is typical of his highly distinctive and collectable work). Derek Boshier was refreshed thanks to a big 60s exhibition at the Barbican in 1993, but appears in all the textbooks. So I think you can afford to rate them all a little higher in your episode summary now."

Copyright Savage Messiah: A Ken Russell Site Iain Fisher

Here is a preview of Ken with Peter Blake!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!! Louse of Usher and The fall (temporarily) of joy

2011-10-31T04:38:00.002Z

From the wonderful The Fall of The Louse of Usher, James Johnston and Lizi Tribble sing "Ligeia" their rock video depicting when Roderick Usher was the Mick Jagger of his era and he was number one with a bullet. The senseless killing of 49 very rare and endangered captive Tigers, Mountain Lions, African Lions, Lionesses, Monkeys, Bears and wolf in Zanesville, Ohio two weeks ago has created a great deal of sadness. In my spare time reserved for this project, I drifted into reading dark, freaky books about the Rolling Stones and googling articles about their various wildness years, erotica and misadventures and I did have some great fun listening to the songs of "Goats Head Soup" and rare outtakes.

I'll say this for Ken Russell, joyfulness and levity is in everything he does even if it is dark. I look towards the next two days for ritual purification to counteract my feelings of glum and then climbing back to the clouds in silver boots to be with stars who twinkle with Russellvision..

Happy Birthday 200th to Franz Liszt

2011-10-24T16:51:00.008+01:00

Look at the charts today and ask who will be remembered in 200 years and so lauded as heartbreaking genius of staggering creativity and justified pomposity? This Liszt composition, Dream of Love with lyrics created by Rick Wakeman for the Ken-tacular "Lisztomania" is special to me because I originally heard it in a 1970s documentary on Paul Robeson called "The Tallest Tree in Our Forest". That's the music used for shots of Paul Robeson and Eslanda's courtship as well as for an episode of "Tales of the Unexpected" called "Edward The Conquer". A husband and wife adopt a stray cat. The cat Edward, responds to the woman's piano playing to the degree that she becomes convinced that it is the reincarnation of composer Franz Liszt. The woman bonds with the cat much to her husband's jealousy!

Meet The Bunnies (sic)?

2011-10-15T06:10:00.001+01:00

(Without a doubt, this one, few second segment of Tommy simply baffles and amazes viewers!! Countless people will tell you these are "Playboy Bunnies" or "Bunny Girls" when they are actually simple showgirls. Their club was bombed and out of their dressing room they fled with gas masks on. A quick cached glance around the net and it seems an almost essential part of the plot for many! See below...)

"...Lanza writes about these hard-to-read pictures with humor, piquancy and inviting clarity. He also obtains quotes from Russell that offer fresh insights to imagery from some of his films: The bizarre sight of chorus girls wearing gas masks in the early part of Tommy, for example, turns out to be something he actually saw during the Blitz. " Tim Lucas 2007 review of Russell biography "Phallic Frenzy"

"Which is where Tommy comes in, the bonkers Brit helmer spying the opportunity to accommodate his interests in lofty themes and base imagery (if it's naughty nuns or barely clad Blitz-era showgirls in gas masks you're after, call Kinky Ken) and throwing himself into it hook, line and flipper." Total Film

And so, took flight with his imagination. In the film’s opening WWII sequence, you can tell you’re not in for anything like a normal cinematic experience when young women are seen prancing through bombed-out London in white knickers and gas masks." - Brian Poyser Austin Film Society

"Meanwhile, Russell’s operatic sensibilities inspire him to try and top each show-stopping number, so that a glimpse of underwear-clad women in gas masks gets trumped a few minutes later by a scene at a Marilyn Monroe-worshipping church..." Noel Murray AV Club

"Blame eccentric satyr director, Ken Russell, whose hallucinogenic vision puts the "higher" in Messiah, jamming the movie with images of sensual nightmare: showgirls in gasmasks, bombers-as-crucifixes, a skeleton with a snake-as-penis, giant pinballs littering the landscape, and Ann-Margret lolling in chocolatey, syrupy goodness." - dunmore_ego from imbd

Tommy 3: Factory Girl

2011-10-14T08:46:00.086+01:00

3. Ball Bearing factory

After a very violent plane crash juxtaposed with Captain Walker broken portrait we now see shiny, silver balls.

Diorama Five- Nora is now in a brightly lit ammunitions factory. Just as a diorama artist would not be able to use real ammunition, Ken has taken stout plastic, silver tipped crayons and has the women for the war effort filling them with... pinballs? Ball bearings? We use must our imaginations here. With brilliancy Ken utilizes the classic "Rose the Riveter " dutifully "mucking in for the common good" vibe.

The first vocal begins (appropriately with Pete singing a blistering "Captain Walker") as we see an oddly made up messenger with a classical ballet gait approach Nora. As a child I always thought this was a very elegant woman with a moustache. She certainly has a regal bearing and on closer examination of the screen caps it is clear she is made up to accentuate her cheekbones with soot while giving her an androgynous look (above and below right).

The news is delivered and an undone Nora faints with grief and shock. The silver balls fall all around her symbolising her anger as well as foreshadowing the story to follow. She is in the factory working for the war effort after all and the war just wounded her sanity and as we will come to see her good judgement (or at least the little she has built up as such a young person). In pulling down a thousand silver balls, Nora is saying "might as well take at least some of it with me". Ineffectual as causing chaos on a work site may seem here. yet, in this era we all know that it is now a common place occurrence to see people shoot up and/or destroy where they work once tragedy and/ or hardship over takes their senses and personal lives.

The Lion Roars Part One: The Optimists of Nine Elms

2011-10-13T07:52:00.001+01:00

(A few days diversion from Tommy. In 1993 Ken Russell published "Fire Over England" republished as "The Lion Roars" a few years later. I'll be referencing many of his choices in the coming months as they have undoubtedly helped to shape who he is-and what he is not- as an artist.)

Ken's overview of classic and modern British films and film makers aka "Fire Over England" is wonderful-please buy this book! Through it I discovered The Archers aka Powell and Pressburger, many heretofore to me unknown films from the 1930s and 40s and best of all Ken's reappraisals of some of my most favourite British films including a little known and astonishingly powerful film starring Peter Sellers- "The Optimists of Nine Elms".

I first saw this film in two parts as an afternoon movie when I was very young. I was floored seeing it again recently as I remembered almost nothing about the plot and had transposed certain costumes and lines it with "Being There" but they are entirely different films. If you can believe it (and you will when you see the film) this is actually the better performance and Sellers greatest role. I had been interested to see that Ken gave it a very long write up and something told me to watch it again. It also shows a London that is almost no more. When the working class and poor was workin' and had jobs and ate home cooked food around a dinner table. English industry was in England and people came to live in the UK and blend in to make the country better not isolated in pockets of separation. "Skunk" and "rocky" were either animals or minerals or possibly something only middle class folks bought from odd men who hung out in Soho and called themselves "Spanish Tony" or "Candyman. Indigenous buskers were all about..where are they now? Dog lovers will love this film-BIG TIME.Be prepared to cry buckets but still be very happy if you see this Tony Simmons' masterpiece.

From "A Lion Roars" Ken Russell on "The Optimists of Nine Elms" (contains some plot spoilers)

"Peter Sellers plays a misanthropic street musicians down on his luck, who barely scrapes enough together to feed himself and his only friend a scruffy mongrel. Enter two neglected kids, equally scruffy, who live in a nearby slum. Dad's too busy earning and Mum's too bust with the new baby to bother with them. But at least they have each other and the potential friend in Sellers who they follow around the streets as he plays for pennies. He tolerates the children but is not easily won over. They call him 'mister', he calls them 'Nothing'. He lives in a squalid few with a few creature comforts and the kids don't fare much better-they haven't a toy between them and have to empty the potty in the one and only outside loo every morning and wash under the kitchen tap. But are they downhearted? No! Why? Because they live in hope of moving to a new block of council flats with a little dog to keep them company.

One day they take Sellers to the water's edge and point out the celestial towers gleaming through the sunny mist of the Thames on the far shore. Gradually, and against his better judgement Sellers guardedly opens up to the kids, whom he recognises as outcasts like himself, and grudgingly decides to help them. He suggests they baby-sit his sick mongrel to earn a bit of pocket money while he slips out for a pint. This will enable them to buy a dog of their own at Battersea Dogs' Home. They jump at the idea and soon have enough saved up to buy a pup which they take home. their parents go crazy. Dad says no pets are allowed in the flats where they are going and even shows the kids a notice nailed to the wall to prove it. They've got the flats mixed up anyway. They are not headed for the posh ones on the far side of the river but the old ones on the wrong side of the river.

(I'm leaving out the rest of the plot and ending as described by Ken)

Told with economy and sensitivity, this underrated film establishes Tony Simmons as a first rate director and justifies the risk Sellers took in tackling a difficult role in an offbeat subject and doing it for peanuts. it was one of his last films and one of his best. The rest of the cast also turned in convincing portrayals. The Optimists of Nine Elms of nine elms was a great achievement all around, with an extra special word of praise for the editor, Jimmy Jympson. And if you need convincing he's one of the best editors around, just look at the scene where the little girl loses her little brother on a refuse site by the river's edge. Screaming gulls, the snapping jaws of the excavator, the rushing river and screeching trains inter-cut with the growing panic on the girl's face, all combine to produce an almost unbearable tension. And how refreshing to meet some real Londoners, resilient dogged, philosophic, with a wry sense of humour second to none.

I wonder what sort of film Tony Simmons would make in Nine Elms now.

(Stunning photos of the above pictured Hyde Park Pet Cemetery featured along with early 1970s London in the "Optimists of Nine Elms" from London Insight which may well be thee greatest blog on the net-alongside this one of course:)

Ken Russell's Film 60 Seconds of Fame Film for BAFTA

2011-10-12T13:38:00.001+01:00

This is so sweet. Ken is at the very end, though I also think that may be him in The Golem mask after Lisi who is at :32.

Ken Russell Picks Up The First Motovun Maverick Award 2008 NSFW

2011-10-11T06:52:00.004+01:00

The opening sequence is very TOMMY! I truly believe only someone from a former Commuinst country would have been brave enough to edit such a tribute. Even his fans who may have seen more films would have shown less of the REAL Ken.

NSFW-big time!!

Tommy Overture 2: Vacancy at The Morrison Hotel

2011-10-10T23:59:00.005+01:00

2. Group Captain Walker called off to war, bombing and plane crash

(the showgirls get their own separate post!) The blossoms of Borrowdale and Lodore Falls melt into a resplendent chandelier and the image of Nora in a light periwinkle ball gown and Captain Walker slow dancing; deeply and sensuously in love. At first they to seem to be in a glittering ballroom but when the phone rings the camera pulls back and we see the Ken's first diorama.

Diorama One: What looked like the London Palladium is actually the bedroom of the Walker home prepared for any potential bombing. Furniture piled up and drop clothed, a Morrison Shelter and only a sparse amount of necessities. Group Captain Walker is now out of his Glen Alpine tweeds and in his full RAF uniform as he's told to report for duty.

Diorama Two a bombed out London including a building where Captain Walker and Nora see the deceased body of young boy (a clear foreshadowing of the end sequence and of the living death their son will endure).

Diorama Three- the train station and Walker's departure. Two silhouettes in unison and that spectacular velvet Russell-vision and keen lighting set a classic Hollywood farewell. Anyone who would accuse Russell of gratuitously going for a cleavage shot with AM's Nora is a hater. There is nothing "for the lads" about the shot.

At this point things become almost Magritte like. What time of day is it? What world, what universe are we in? Captain Walker looks down commandingly yet we feel he is acknowledging Nora who is staring up at the sky unflinchingly rather than at a member of his squadron. Resigned to his duty while she is mentally "gone".

Diorama Four- Now the aforementioned Morrison Shelter with it's steel plate “table” top, welded wire mesh sides, and a metal lath “mattress”- type floor is the tight focus. For most Americans it appears to be part of Ken's arsenal of creative campy tricks when in reality the historical accuracy is beyond sobering. Nora withstands the bombing and Captain Walker is shot down. His National Service booklet lying beside his broken photo.

Paint Nora's hand imprint as clouds and one has a Magritte painting brought to life. Even "as is" it is still uncannily close to the great Belgian Surrealist.

British Word of the post: Morrison Shelter

Tommy's Overture 1: Our Hearts Were Young and Cluster Bombed

2011-10-09T23:59:00.029+01:00

1.Opening sequence
A Film By Ken Russell TOMMY by "The Who"

The opening shot of Tommy is stunning. I was about 10 years old when I first saw Tommy and the first fifteen minutes or so, as I previously mentioned is where people either can't deal or get pulled right in. For me, as a child, I could see the staging was like an opera as soon as I saw Robert Powell turn around from the full moon passing down in front of him (some say the image is of a fantastical sun, some think this is a moon). The two adults (in reality recently just children themselves) seemed very in love which of course as a kid is "gross!!" As a teen, I got high and laughed at Tommy. "This movie reminds me of my mother" my best friend said at the time we were both tripping. Here I am now and a mother myself and the film has a radically different effect. Now the film to me is very moving despite the grandiose camp.

Robert Powell who also starred as Gustav Mahler and played Jesus Christ for Zefferelli rather convincingly is paired successfully with Ann-Margret who matches his fine, almost petite facial features with her own. As they read a map of the Lake District with Derwentwater and St.Herberts island ( the setting for Beatrix Potter's 'The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin') in the back ground, they are young and and in love forever. The film quality here is like velvet with love making in waterfalls and blossoms billowing down as they go for round two. The diorama effect I previously mentioned has not begun yet as this is a very romantic holiday and must flow from one inter-war oil painting to another.

To many viewers the waterfall is clearly where Tommy is conceived out of love and even if it is only an assumption by the audience it is an important one. Tommy is a wanted child and is created by two people who love each other let sadly don't know themselves yet. (Perhaps, Captain Walker knows who he is through duty?) We should not forget that Walker is a Captain and the possibility of going off to war was always a given. Were this left many young women and children was in a kind of hellish limbo always disguised by the mantle of "soldiering on" and "manning up". There were only letters to exchange while people waited. Tommy is a quintessentially English story and Pete and Ken are making a clear statement in the film about an entire generation of indigenous Brits (many still in their teens) who was forced to make emotional and physical sacrifices and the even younger children who were often left to pick up the pieces and negotiate with needy adults while they themselves were still helpless. These moments in the Lake District are what Nora will seek to recapture her entire life to feel human.

(Note: all photos can be enlarged and should be as this film is cinematic magic. A huge thank you in advance to American Buddha who has a beautiful Tommy film study page and who provided the screen caps of Ken's masterpiece.)

The Dioramas in Tommy

2011-10-08T07:53:00.003+01:00

As mentioned a few posts ago, I don't see Ken Russell's film of Tommy as a "POP art musical" and I do not see it as a long form music video/precursor to MTV either. (To paraphrase Jello Biafra, it took MTV one year to sink as low as commercial TV had in 25. MTV was and is 99% rubbish.) I instead see Ken Russell's film of Tommy as a series of living, breathing life size, three-dimensional storyboards. Illusion through depth perception. Without one word of dialogue and without sub-titles, I see this diorama format extending into the acting as well.

The mise-en-scène is what allows the actors in Tommy to bring to the screen the corrupt and flawed adults that are around all children. In any film (provided the script is good), with even the weakest and phoniest of characters, we are "reassured" via their spoken dialogue that the characters are somehow "trying" and worthy of empathy even if they are screwed up. In Tommy however, the adults can't talk their way out of their failures. For example: Uncle Ernie winks at Tommy's step father Bernie while reading the "Gay News" heralding "Obscenity Triumphs" with a garter belt on his head and Tommy lying in bed nearby. He can't talk his way out of being a child abuser and rapist. Bernie stares at him and sets his paper on fire, effectively burning (and thus erasing) the truth away to ashes. The lack of dialogue does not give Bernie the chance to feign concern, express anger or speak with indifference.

Here are the scenes broken down that we'll be studying:

1. Opening sequence

2. Called off to war and plane crash

3. Ball bearing factory, birth of Tommy and cenotaph

4. Bernies Holiday Camp

5. 1951- Tommy's father's murder-What About The Boy

6. Amazing Journey

7. Christmas

8. Eyesight to the Blind

8. Acid Queen

9. Do You Think It's Alright? (1) Cousin Kevin

10. Do You Think It's Alright? (2) Uncle Ernie

11. Do You Think It's Alright?(3) Sparks

12. Extra, Extra (1)

13. Pinball Wizard

14. Champagne aka Beans and Chocolate

15. There's a Doctor

16. Go to the Mirror

17. Tommy, Can You Hear Me?/Smash The Mirror

18. I'm Free

19. Mother and Son

20. Sensation

21. Extra, Extra(2)/Sally Simpson

22. Welcome

23. T.V. Studio

24. Tommy's Holiday Camp

25. We're Not Gonna Take It

26. See Me, Feel Me

27. Listening to You/End

Background Details on Tommy

2011-10-07T06:43:00.000+01:00

So before we start breaking down the scenes and studying the masterpiece that is Tommy here are a few details and observations:

*Pete Townshend spent countless hours and time perfecting the film's soundtrack and working on the new songs. As far as I know he received no extra money from the film producers for doing this yet worked tirelessly for the better part of nine months. Such was the era. Had this been today, he'd have walked away with at least 500k for all the extra hard work, perhaps much more given Tommy's unprecedented stature. Something to consider.

*A new linking song, "Extra Extra", narrates Tommy's rise to fame and introduces the battle with the pinball champ. It is set to the tune of "Miracle Cure". Both are performed by Simon Townshend, Pete's younger brother. We will study the changes, additions and differences in the soundtarck as opposed to the album in the upcoming days.

*The film version of Tommy differs in numerous ways from the original 1969 album. The primary change is the period, which is moved forward to the post-World War II era, while the original album takes place just after World War I. As a result the song "1921" is renamed "1951" and the opening line "got a feelin' '21 is gonna be a good year" changes to "got a feelin' '51 is gonna be a good year". The historical alterations allowed Ken to use more contemporary images and settings.

*Much of Tommy was shot on locations around Portsmouth, including the scene near the end of the movie featuring the giant 'pinballs', which were in fact obsolete buoys found in a British Navy yard, which were simply sprayed silver. Several other segments, including part of the Bernie's Holiday Camp sequence and the concert scenes in the 'Sally Simpson' sequence were shot inside the Gaiety Theatre on South Parade Pier at Southsea in Hampshire.

*On June 11, 1974, the pier caught fire and was badly damaged while the production was filming there; according to Russell, the fire started during the filming of the scene of Ann-Margret and Oliver Reed dancing together during the "Bernie's Holiday Camp" sequence, and smoke from the fire can in fact be seen drifting in front of the camera in several shots; Russell also used a brief exterior shot of the building fully ablaze during the scenes of the destruction of Tommy's Holiday Camp by his disillusioned followers

The Composer, The Avatar and The Director Who Heard Tommy

2011-10-06T12:05:00.094+01:00

(3:54 Underture)

In "The Story of Tommy" documentary from the mid 90s, Pete Townshend makes what I once thought was a funny, lovingly pejorative quip about Ken Russell:

"We did a production of Tommy with the London Symphony and Lou Reizner and it was a great success. And it led directly to Ken Russell's film because I don't think he could have understood Tommy without hearing it played by a symphony orchestra."

I always thought Pete meant that Ken's big personality is so bombastic that he needs a big production to be satisfied but I was incorrect in this case. Pete meant that Ken's love of classical music runs so deep and so passionate that it is the standard by which he judges all music and most art. Apparently the Who's 1969 Tommy album Ken found boring. It was only after going over the orchestrated music that he pointed out to Pete:

"...if one was going to do it as a film, that there were huge gaps in the story of the deaf, dumb and blind boy who finally gets to see the and see the light so to speak in many ways. You never knew who the father was, why he was killed, why the boy went blind, deaf and dumb. It's almost as if his album started half way through the story and the other half was in his mind and had not been written down."

And thus the main framework of Tommy's narrative as we know it today and what would eventually become the mega-watt stage production performed all over the world today was created by Pete and Ken. The two great men who inspire so many are forever linked by Tommy.

Where does Meher Baba fit in here? Well, it is clear that the ground based spiritual teachings of Baba gave Pete a new direction and purpose in all aspects of his life. Meher Baba's influence on those of us who love him is very personal so I cannot interpret this, I'm just glad Meher Baba's teachings made it to the West while he was still alive.

"The experiences are so innumerable and varied, that the journey appears to be interminable and the Destination is ever out of sight. But the wonder of it is, when at last you reach your Destination you find that you had never travelled at all! It was a journey from here to Here." -Meher Baba

That quote to me sums up Tommy and I feel the lives of those of us who had dramatic and traumatic childhoods. As in the film there is a circular narrative to those words of Baba. Tommy, flees as flames engulf the Holiday camp. He escapes and arrives at the same place in the wilderness in the beginning of the film where his parents spent a romantic day together (presumably the day he was conceived). Though now alone and no longer a rich and famous messiah, Tommy attains an even greater sense of self-awareness and one hopes freedom as he faces the rising sun and a new dawn. His arms are outstretched to face the sun as his father's were in the film's opening scene.

Here are a few blog cross posts on Tommy being influenced by Meher Baba and how it helped form the foundation of the work.

Dioramas Viewed Through Kaleidoscopes: Ken Russell's Film of Tommy

2011-10-05T16:40:00.003+01:00

His eye is on the sparrow.

Good morning converts! I have no doubt that we'll be able to break some new ground here by studying "Ken Russell's Film of Tommy." Despite being thee unrivalled rock opera to end all rock operas and talked, written and performed endlessly, Tommy never stops morphing. In my lifetime thus far, Tommy has gone from a wild film on cable to a classic album you stole, begged or borrowed as a tween; then a 20th reunion revival act "featuring The Who and guests"; to a Tony Award winning Broadway play; various remastered cds, laser discs, dvds, blu rays and soundtracks galore; all the way to the present where Roger Daltrey and friends are performing it live and in classic original unadulterated style as we speak. Yet, the preceding was only a fraction of Tommy's many incarnations. It is one of the reasons why, in about two generations, that Tommy along with The Who as a band will be reappraised and as popular as ever much like The Doors were a decade after Jim Morrison died. Many will continue to perform the rock opera but no one will approach a remake of Ken's film.

The first view many of us Who fans ever have of Ken Russell is in the Kids Are Alright when his flamboyant TV interview precedes the Tommy segment:

"This countries' in a weird, feeble grotesque state and its time it got out of it and what could get it out of it is rock music. And I think Townshend, Daltrey, Entwistle and Moon could rise this country out of its decadent , ambient state, more than Wilson and those crappy people could ever hope to achieve!"

When many of us saw the film as children we either were scared and could not deal or watched it on repeat over a dozen times (guess who?) I'd seen many live action Disney films and masterpieces like "Willy Wonka" with wild clothes, giant mushrooms and flying cars but Tommy to me was so uncluttered in comparison. Each segment was a impeccably laid out, dazzling diorama box viewed through a lavish colour dipped lens. Not psychedelic, not the messy breathing paisley blanket yet not sparsely Pop Art either. Sure one could use all those adjectives and be accurate though none of them are technically true. So much of the film mocks the convention of the adult world; the false stances, the neediness, the poses to impress the neighbours. As a child I picked up on that at once. I also had no problem working out that Tommy was "shocked" into deaf/blind/mute submission.

In the coming days I'll show how Ken lays each song's scene out so methodically that the essence of the corrupt adults in the film simply seeps through.

Rest In Peace Steve Jobs

2011-10-05T06:45:00.000+01:00

I Movie, pro-tools and Final Cut Pro now saves many a film maker and musician from the development and funding hell that Ken faced many times. Ken himself is able to make films on his own now and call all the shots. Mac Book Pro (the biggest one) and a nice carrying case is worth every penny. Everyone can be an artist now thanks to Steve Jobs.

"Steve Jobs was a visionary genius and very, very cool. I would never have gone near a home computer if he hadn't made the interface of "emotional-human meeting intelligent-machine" a matter of relating your biofield to an appliance that was part Porsche and part comic book. Part parallel universe, too, the Mac became part of the family. Elegance, beauty and wit resound in the design and simplicity of everything Apple. He made instantaneous global communication a reality to bridge the gap while people's telepathic skills are still in development. An artist who changed the world."

-Lisi Tribble

Crazy Like A Fox : Keith Moon in Tommy

2011-10-04T23:59:00.002+01:00

The below pic is not from Tommy but it is my all time favourite picture of any celebrity. I have a small copy of it framed, cut out from a booklet that came with The Kids Are Alright LP and it has not left my side since I was about 15. Ken gave Keith Moon easily his best moments on big screen. I guess it is now TOMMY time as of tomorrow-it just has to be. Grace and all of us out there in the Blogisphere should have fun with the next few weeks!

1001 things KEN!

2011-10-03T23:55:00.062+01:00

(Tweakin and trippin: My new Ken Russell book did not arrive today. I am now free to leave my body with disappointment.)

Today I ran to the post to open what was to be Ken Russell Directing Film: Directors Art From Script to Cutting Room" by Ken Russell. Can you imagine that such a book ever even existed? Well it does! I had no idea until about a week ago and oh joy! It will be mine soon. Or so I thought. Instead I was sent "Evaluating Research in Health and Social Care" by Roger Gomm, Gill Needham and Anne Bullman. Hmmmm..... I'm not stranger to disappointments in the post. If you order a lot of things this way you get used to the occasional snafu and that often things just seem so much different when they arrive. I don't expect this same muck up with books though.

Perhaps my biggest most desired item to ever come by mail and be a grand let down was a booklet sold out of Archie Comics book back in the day, called "1001 Things Free". I believe today a facsimile exists called "1001 Things You Can Get For Free" but this was the classic old school name of what can only be described as the biggest con since Sea Monkeys. "1001 things free" was advertised alongside alum gum, joy buzzers and whoopee cushions so you think that might have given me just a bit of a clue! The ads usually featured a post box bursting with gifts and fancy packages or better yet simply a cornucopia brimming with free Kodak film, cosmetics, sunglasses etc etc! I was about seven and scrapped together the 3.75 needed and mailed it off (they always jacked up the shipping). It took an ETERNITY to arrive-at least two months-and then there it was. It turned out if you sent twice as much as you paid for the actual booklet you'd get some kind of film for a kind of camera few used any more (36mm?) and nearly everything else was either addresses to mail away for discount detergent vouchers or travel handouts!

A Martinet on the Studio Floor

2011-10-02T06:34:00.000+01:00

(Waiting to get some: Glenda Jackson as Tchaikovsky's wife in The Music Lovers)

I watched six of Ken films these past few days (Music Lovers, Salome, Whore, Isadora Duncan, Dante's Inferno and Delius:Song of Summer) and I'm still trying to decide which film to cover next. Maybe I'll stick with fun quotes and anecdotes for a while longer. Our son loved Isadora Duncan: Greatest Dancer in The World. Lots of speeded up people jumping about and lots of children dancing!

Elgar Study and Who's Next?

2011-10-01T23:50:00.019+01:00

A Japanese user on You Tubed named Nankipoo was kind enough to make this interesting comparison of Ken's 1962 Elgar and his 2002 take.

I'm still not sure which film to tackle next. For some reason each work I choose seems to set the mood of the world. Delius co-existed with the lightness of summer and then Mahler set the cryptic and pyre like mood during the riots. What I am sure of is that all of Ken's films and his related works are for me resplendence in a dark world. A colourful way to see the truth in both life and history.

Delius Redux Pt 1: That odd feeling you get....

2011-09-30T23:56:00.002+01:00

(High on himself: Delius remembers and listens)

If our son decides not to nap then I usually put on dvd from the Ken Russell at the BBC box set; usually Elgar. He then gets to absorb some culture with me as I reach for a 2:00pm cup coffee. Reading more about the making of "Delius: Song of Summer" in Joesph Lanza's book, I re-watched it today and have thus far found my most uncomfortable moment in a Ken Russell film. Why it's effects eluded me previously I have no idea. I think as I digest and learn more about Ken Russell the artist I'm simply seeing and feeling more.

For me there are so far only two uncomfortable moments in Ken's work both of which I'll discuss here. Prior to this it was only the homage to Luchino Visconti's "Death in Venice" in Mahler that concerned me. An ailing Mahler (Robert Powell) looks out the window with a beautific and optimistic look on his face as an older man looks lovingly at a young boy preening around the platform. It just weirds the hell out of me. I think because I was so much older looking for my age when I was 9 to 12ish and had a great deal of adults checking me out that it hits some kind of note in my memory. The tallest kid always is blamed first. Stared and accosted I was, sometimes with avarice and sometimes with longing and disgustingly with lust. Anonymous adults in public places were like the zombies of my childhood. Thus the platform scene in Mahler is just simply too visceral.

The in scene Delius: Song of Summer which now eclipses it just smacks for how becoming an adult (and therefore leadened down with so much shit in one's psyche) dictates life. In the scene, Fenby (Christopher Gable) and Jelka all react in their own silent and stunned way as they play Delius' own music for him. It fills and then floods a beautiful sunny room with afternoon light and passionate energy. The composer, despite being paralysed and blind, acts like he's either going to have an orgasm or cry out that he is the Master God of the universe for all eternity as he he sits listening. Many film historians incorrectly state that apart from the trip to Norway sequence (when he is still with his sight) the only time we see Delius with open eyes is when he has finally died. Incorrect. In this scene his eyes are wide open like he's possessed, stunned and most of all incandescent within the knowledge, the UNDYING BELIEF that he is a great artist. It simply makes me uncomfortable that he's so high on himself.

I'm simply too uncomfortable with mortality to not look away.

Wicker Girl

2011-09-29T23:05:00.018+01:00

Two posts today because yesterday, while our son slept, I had chance to catch a very weird and scary film I have not seen since I was about 11 and the rest of the day was a daze. Let me back track a bit to Ken's wonderful book "Fire Over England" in which Ken Russell gives us an over view of his cinematic influences. I was happy to read that Ken cites "The Wicker Man" as a film he found unsettling. For me the 1977 film "The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane", starring Jodie Foster has that same quality despite being a very different story. Take away pagan costumes and this is the the 1970s young adult Wicker Man. Martin Sheen's weirdest, creepiest role. Very bizarre, great, scary film. Jodie Foster is at her best. And the background score has some keen "wah wah pedal" action!

In honour of film history and those like Ken Russell who keep it alive, I MUST recommend this incredible blog about the Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane. I am staggered by the sophistication of the collective work done on it.

More Phallic Frenzy

2011-09-28T23:59:00.001+01:00

I'm almost 2/3s finished. F*ck Pauline Kael- what a slag. The reviews quoted were an eye opener because Kael, Alexander Walker (the Evening Standard critic Ken pelted with a rolled up newspaper) and Roger Ebert especially should have just stopped reviewing his films. Pauline Kael is particularly distributing to read because she sounded so emotionally invested, so timid, vastly unimaginative and stuck in some 1940s middle American malaise.

These proclaimers pre-internet could make or break films. Ebert has the most nerve though as Russ Meyer's best friend and script writer!! I think there was jealously involved because, as much as I truly love a lot of Russ Meyer's work (I am Super Amanda because of Super Vixens) and think he was astonishingly artistic, he's more of an X rated cartoonist than an auteur compared to Ken. That's not a dig as I'm a ONCE AGAIN, huge fan of Meyer who was happily by choice in a mostly one track big boob parody niche as I am on You Tube. I think Ebert hoped Meyer would find more respect in this era the way Ken has but he has not and is still mostly considered Grindhouse. I just expect Ebert to have a bit more respect for the eccentrics and the risk takers if he's worked on film like "Beneath the valley of the Ultra Vixens'! One star for The Devils is just shameful on his part.

It is upsetting. I'm now almost 2/3s finished. Critics and studios were so spoiled with talent and so fascist like the way record companies became. And they wonder why everyone is file sharing now! On a happier note, reading about Derek Jarman and Glenda Jackson has been delightful. I know now never to second guess myself or be ashamed of my rage towards convention again. "Phallic Frenzy" and "A British Picture" should be required reading for all artists. And if "required reading for all artists" sounds oxymoronic it is meant that those books serve as a reminder of how much hard work it really is, how you will suffer and go nuts and how many haters line the procession to make sure you're locked away if you indeed really do want to set the stage and create a scene.

Phallic Frenzy is HERE!

2011-09-27T23:58:00.014+01:00

Yes, I said "no books on Ken by other people" but the man has lived longer than Stalin and one of the Popes combined! He has a history and what is a study of history going to be with no book selection? At first I thought this was going to mostly rehash a British Picture but not at all after reading a few chapters. I now have to own every Ken book!

Here is a rare early unfinished film by Ken called "Knights on Bikes".
Here we see the greatness he would assume.

Let's Rebuild London!! One solid glass tadger at a time!

2011-09-26T07:01:00.001+01:00

Ken and his wife Lisi visit a quaint shop while on tour in the states that may well serve as an inspiration for new businesses being encouraged to sprout up and grow after the London riots.

NSFW...but so fun!

On the face of it

2011-09-25T07:55:00.004+01:00

As mentioned, the Encyclopaedia Britannica set from 1977 has Ken Russell listed as an "author" before filmmaker. I'm not sure why but as I'm still reading up on all he's done he may well have written many books in the 50s and 60s I have yet to discover. Why the term author would precede film director still puzzles me though. Perhaps the voluminous amount of screen and teleplays Ken has penned constitute author for EB. It certainly does for me anyway. I do think Ken Russell is a fantastic writer of both fiction and non-fiction. So many of the greatest performers and film makers are. You know when a huge star you admire has reached 40 odd or so and has yet to write anything, including a biography that they are truly dullsville with the pen.

So I'm breaking my vow and getting loads of Ken books as I can afford them. A British Picture, Ken's autobio (pictured) is with me now and his volume on directing and writing for films plus Lanza's Phallic Frenzy are both taking FAR too long to arrive in the post! Here is a great review of the latter from The Times of London a few years back:

Phallic Frenzy, Ken Russell and his Films by Joseph Lanza
This delightful biography of the eccentric British film director could be the most fun you'll have with a book this summer.

The Sunday Times review by Antonia Quirke
Ken Russell was born into a lower middle-class family in Southampton in 1927. When he was little he went to see Pinocchio and was fondled by the man in the seat next to him. Ken marched out and complained to his Aunt Moo, but she didn't really listen. Neither did Mum or Dad, but then they weren't particularly switched on.
Ken was definitely switched on: he thought that a gorilla resided next door, and longed to live in a puddle. Mum loved the cinema above all else and forced Ken to go with her every day to watch ghastly romances. ("You said there wasn't going to be any love in the film and they're kissing already!") So Ken converted the garage into a cinema, adding extension arms to his Pathescope 9.5mm hand-cranked projector, renting Die Nibelungen and Metropolis from the local chemist (some chemist), and screening them for whoever would watch.
Soon Ken was sent to a naval college where he dressed the other cadets in drag, using rolled-up rugger socks for boobs. And he hadn't even noticed real girls yet. Plus it's only page 12.

I could go on. In fact I will, because nothing I could invent could be any more interesting than the things Ken Russell has actually done. Simply, Joseph Lanza's passionate, witty bow to the director is the most fun you'll have with a book this summer. Taking us through Russell's oeuvre of more than 90 films (for small and big screen, some familiar, others rarely seen), it pummels the reader with detail and anecdote, using interviews with actors and producers, reviews, bombastic description, academic theories, personal opinion, and the occasional, tantalising photograph. Although Lanza never actually clapped eyes on Russell himself, the whole thing manages to back-flip off the page, fresh and unlikely.
So. Dad wanted Ken to be a shoe salesman like him, but back home in Southampton his son literally had a nervous breakdown at the thought, and was incapable of moving off the settee except to pee, until one day Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No 1 came on the radio and Ken understood that he must be a ballerina. Aunt Moo immediately made him join the RAF.

Soon after, marrying young and living on gooseberries, Russell took an eye-catching series of photographs of Teddy Girls on bomb sites and landed a job at the BBC making films about famous composers — this was 1958, when showing even the traces of an actor's hands or feet while depicting the lives of historical personages was thought of as a perversion of the truth.
But perverting the truth was Ken's whole bag. "TV audiences are asleep in armchairs," he reasoned. "It's a good thing to shake them up — if only to reach for the phone." Ken showed a child actor playing Elgar riding a horse across the Malvern Hills, thus changing the definition of verisimilitude on British screens for the rest of time. The public went potty with enthusiasm, voting it the best thing they'd ever seen. Before they knew it, Ken was giving them Isadora Duncan gyrating naked on a grand piano in advance of being rescued from suicide by a one-legged man (Ken in a cameo). As they say, be careful what you wish for.
The rest — the rise, and fall, of sorts — is a matter of public record. By 1978 Ken had found mucho notoriety and wealth with films such as Women in Love, The Devils and Tommy. Alan Bates and Oliver Reed had wrestled naked in front of a fire in a scene the Argentinians found so worrying they cut it to just the two actors shaking hands. Gabriel Byrne's Shelley had tongued Julian Sands's Byron, Hugh Grant had passed out in the lair of a gigantic white worm, and Sean Bean had had Lady Chatterley up against trees lined with flower-strewn corpses. Some people (the British censor John Trevelyan) loved what they saw, others (the American critic Pauline Kael) despised it. Friends and colleagues croaked, years passed, marriages exploded. One wife recalls that the only way she could calm Russell during a career-busting phone call to Hollywood was to douse him head to toe in Pimm's. Today the "unbankable" director makes films in the back yard of his new house (his last one burnt to a crisp) with his neighbours and the fourth Mrs Russell, a sensible American he found on the internet.
And yet, when Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni died last year, the BBC immediately scurried to Russell for comment. Their cameras regarded him — this 80-year-old infant, this apparent monument to unashamed hysteria — but were unsure what to make of him. Well, here's what to make of him. Ken Russell is an artist. He knows in his bones that cinema is the delirious form. He understands that the last thing we need are adults behind the camera, and that the greatest directors — Orson Welles, for starters — have essentially been children. At their best, Russell's films feel as if they are ferociously warding off death itself and have inspired enough sweat and wowzow tears to float a fleet down the Thames. At their worst they are merely out to lunch. We love and need Ken Russell. This exhilarating book reminds us how much.
Phallic Frenzy, Ken Russell and his Films by Joseph Lanza
Aurum £18.99 pp384

MAKEUP TIME!

2011-09-24T07:58:00.005+01:00

(Gilding the Lily. Ken Russell has final touches to his hair make up by Scott Miller for his film "Boudica Bites Back" 2007 made with the Swansea University Film School)

( So at the inception of this Ken quest, I vowed to blog each daily about Ken Russell. Bogging daily can be quite a commitment but I'm keeping my word, so below are links to all my make up days which I still have to fill. For 365, not one day will be blank by July 3rd. 2012, Ken's 85th birthday. Thus far I'm giving myself a C+ grade. C for so many days missed and for not delving into more details like music scores and locations and a plus because I think so far I've tackled unique subject matter. I did breakdown and order "Phallic Frenzy: Ken Russell and His Films" by Joseph Lanza and Ken's own book on film making because reading about Ken is a very nice past time. Please check below for my make up days as I put them up.)

July 17,
July 20,
July 23 us Brits!
July 24
July 28 A great blogpost on Mahler
July 29,
July 31,
August 7
August 9 British Cinema Comes Full Circle
August 10 Mahler at The Mondavi Centre in Davis
August 11
August 20
August 24,
August 25,
August 26,
August 27,
August 29,
September 1 The Debussy Film
September 2
September 3,
September 4,
September 5,
September 7
September 11 ELGAR
September 12
September 13
September 14
September 15
September 16
September 17 Isadora
September 18
September 19
September 20 Dante's Inferno
September 21

This train is going into a tunnel aka Madonna is a rip off copy paste

2011-09-23T23:55:00.003+01:00

Firstly, I'm back from a dusty slow internet connections, brutal muscle strains and cultural crusades that tore me away from the true artist's journey.

And now.... WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THE FOLLOWING EVIL PLAGIARISM WHICH HAS JUST COME TO MY ATTENTION??

You really want to know? Let me give you a little story, once upon a time, the public met Madonna and Madonna met the public but the problem was the public was not attracted to Madonna unless she continually created a huge media scene and because Madonna was also not talented she had to rip off everyone in sight while making a huge media scene and making hardcore porn a Wal mart style mainstream brand. The public had never before seen anyone who would devote four hours a day to working out and even more time to hair, clothing and makeup. But unless the photos look interesting no one will look and all that "work" will be in vain. Even pre-Fame Madonna was stealing looks and poses from EVERYONE. Do you know that that makes her?

A copy paste. Madonna is a rotten plagiarising thief who has stolen from over 70 different people BLATANTLY . REPEATEDLY and WITHOUT ANY ACKNOWLEDGEMENT. AND SHE STOLE FROM KEN! THE MEDIA HAS NEVER CALLED HER ON THIS ONCE.

See for yourself HERE. You will never call Lady Gaga a "madonna copy again".

As for this? It is simply so offensive that I could stomp some romp. I don't keep up with mandonna unless she does something vile in the press so I missed this down to the medallions from Ann-Margaret's dress!She is such a conniving snake that most of her rip offs of Ken Russell went into Tour programmes or the background films in her shows.If Ken was also getting 36 million to make a film as she is for her latest turkey, this might be more pitiful than offensive. Shirley Russell created all you see here as well. Ken once said seeing Shirley's creations and vinatge finds turn up in films by other directors was like "seeing old friends. Madonna in clothing ripped off from Tommy is like knowing your stolen antique wedding dress was sold on Gumtree in exchange for two expired IKEA gift vouchers and a BJ.

Ken Russell in Encyclopaedia Britannica-Old School Style

2011-09-10T11:53:00.001+01:00

So I'm talking about OLD school Britannica, not the online edition which includes Britney Spears and ASDA. I'm going to reference a 1977 edition which was so narrow in their definition of notable subjects, that not even The Who warrant a mention. Ages it seems before the internet, these reference guides could define or erase entire careers and recreate events. Despite an obvious imperialistic feel the EB is still great reading. Even just copying the three entries below proved oddly addictive, like my own personal "Red Headed League"!

A classic set of EBs always features two sets of books; one for ready reference and another for knowledge in-depth. Oddly enough Ken is mentioned as an author first and filmmaker second. (Ironically, his indepth mention shares the same page as Paddy Chayefsky whom went to war with in that same era (provoked) over Altered States.) Ken has mentions in both sets while Sir Edward Elgar only gets a mention in ready reference. Granted, it is a longer than average reference but it seems odd that his life was not given an longer appraisal and biography or that he was not at least mentioned briefly elsewhere. It is almost like he had to know his place even thus. Interestingly enough they mentioned Sea Pictures which is the only song cycle I ever seriously studied as a contralto.

Here is how Ken Russell was considered and how he was entered in the reference guide to end all guides. For contrast I've included the two Russells that he randomly falls in-between. Like Elgar, it seems that EB wants Ken in a hidden niche yet were he is situated is nonetheless quite illuminating. The holographic nature of the universe at play as Ken's wife Lisi would say.

(All print is exactly how it is published in Encyclopaedia Britannica. The asterisk takes you to Ken mention in Knowledge in-Depth)

Russell, John (b. March 29, 1745, Guildford Surrey-d April, 1806, Hull Yorkshire), pastel artist. amateur astronomer, and literary scholar whose brilliantly coloured chalk portraits were highly appreciated in 18th century England. For a decade his works were priced equal to those of Sir Joshua Reynolds. An evangelistic Methodist, he preached at his sitters while he drew them. Although his militant religious views aroused antagonism in some quarters he was retained as a painter to George III. He also wrote several atheistic and technical treatises on literature and painting. For 50 years he kept a diary on his religious exercise and he laboured for 20 years with telescope and engraving tools on a lunar map.

Russell, Kenneth (1927- ), British author and film director
Biographical studies for television 18:126f

18, Page 126: Television and Radio, Arts of In Britain, Ken Russell's idiosyncratic biographical studies of composers (Debussy, Elgar, Delius, Strauss) caused controversy with their experimental, impressionist approach, a technique Russell later developed in his feature film The Music Lovers.

Russell, Lillian (b HELEN LOUISE LEONARD, Dec. 4, 1861, Clinton, Iowa-d. June 6, 1922, Pittsburgh Pa.), singer and actress in light comedies who represented the feminine ideal of her generation. Probably the most photographed women of her time, she was a striking beauty with a Gibson Girl figure. Though she sang in burlesque and light opera for almost four decades, she was as famous for her flamboyant personality as for her beauty and her voice. She made her début as member of the chorus in Gilbert and Sullivan's HMS Pinafore. She received her stage name in 1880 from manger Tony Parsons, and she apprised frequently in his Broadway variety theatre. She achieved stardom the following year in Edmund Audran's Grand Mogul at the New York Bijou Opera House. She also won acclaim in 1890 for her role in Jacques' Offenbach's Grande-Duchesse de Gerolstein. From 1889 until their partnership dissolved in 1904, she appeared in England and the United States with the burlesque company of Joe Weber and Lew Fields. After her fourth marriage, in 1912, she wrote a syndicated newspaper column on health, beauty, and love; she also lectured on these topics before vaudeville audiences.

Ken Russell at The BBC and Stendahl Syndrome in the Kitchen

2011-09-09T07:41:00.003+01:00

The Debussy film

We've really putting our nut down (saving) for many plans but my beautiful husband splurged anyway and bought me my long desired, "Ken Russell at The BBC". A logical segue from "Dance of The Seven Veils" which, alas, cannot be included in my new dvd set due to copyright issues from the poopy Struass family.
I want everyone to own this! I want this shown in all UK schools and as many US schools as possible.

I watched Elgar today and was in for the shock of my life. I of course got the camera out, hoping our baby bumblebee would shyly pose with the box but he instead threw it to the floor and wanted "Barney Sing and Dance". He did warm up when he saw Elgar on the white pony though. Like I said, I was in for a shock. I finally experienced, what I believe to be a mild form of Stendahl syndrome. I somehow thought the film would be a light 20 minute affair with kites and ponies, instead it was a very beautiful and profound film with archival footage of 19th and early 20th century Britain. It felt it was a tad over 75 minutes but I need to check. Each scene was textured, layered on so carefully and the music was beyond belief.
Elgar has his own throne in the pantheon.

Tears seeped out of my eyes for an hour afterwords (not sobbing but seeping). I can't believe the way Elgar and his hopes and despairs just came to life. This was the first work of Ken's in which the WORK artists go through became clear to me. This seems to be the recurring theme of all seven films; Elgar, Duncan, Debussy, Rosetti, Delius, Rousseau and yes, even Reeck-hard Strauss worked, lived and were their art to extent that I don't think exists anywhere today. If it does it is isolated with a few people globally and we must find them. I could have easily named two dozen other artists within each film, connected to the seven, who were working as hard. Comparatively, Earth was once a world of artists. These films are STUNNING.

Once we were naked bodies dancing on a hill at midnight and now we are two eyes staring at Oliver Reed...

And I'm not complaining!

Ken with Mark Kermode who narrated the 2002 Devils Channel 4 special.

Ken Russell's 20 Beautiful Feature Films List

2011-09-08T06:21:00.000+01:00

This list is so beautiful. I tried to find stills that were very unique for even his most colourful works. The more I delve into his work the less I feel I know but art, music and history that's actually to be expected and why I'm here. I also begin to see where Russell works can be categorized. As this is feature films only, I will create BBC, opera, telly and music video list as well.

"My public I carried all before me..."

2011-09-06T05:39:00.002+01:00

Announcer:
Omnibus now presents a new film by Ken Russell, Dance of the Seven Veils. It's been described as a harsh and often violent caricature of the life of the composer Richard Strauss. This is a personal interpretation by Ken Russell, of certain real and many imaginary events in the composers life. Among them are dramatized sequences about the War and the Nazi persecution of the Jews which contains scenes of considerable violence and horror.
(As far as disclaimers go that is actually fairly mild for what is about to come)

Title:
Dance of the Seven Veils: A Comic Strip in 7 Episodes on the life of Richard Strauss 1864-1949

Voice over:
Alas the time is coming when man will give birth to no more stars.
The dead end of mankind is approaching.
(Cue bombastic cheese music)
Into the squalid helpless men of that epoch, I will the reveal the Superman!

Watch this folks. You'll feel twenty feet taller and fifty bucks richer!

Speaking of Nazi sympathizers and film budgets that should be going to Ken Russell....

2011-08-31T04:37:00.014+01:00

W.E.: Madonna's 36 Million Dollar Anti-Semitic Tampon Commercial.

By Strauss!

2011-08-30T04:33:00.029+01:00

Of course this was written about Johann Strauss but Ken Russell let the credits roll to Seven Veils with this Ella Fitzgerald classic-while HE conducts!6:25

This charming Gershwin tune can also be seen performed by Gene Kelly and Oscar Levant in Minnelli's 1951 film "An American in Paris."

KEN RUSSELL IN PERSON!! TODAY! Chichester International Film Festival!

2011-08-28T06:42:00.001+01:00

KEN RUSSELL Double Bill: MAHLER & DANCE OF THE SEVEN VEILS

UK · 1974 & 197 · Ken Russell · 115 & 55min

Sun

28 Aug

13:00

Book

MAHLER

From its stunning opening sequence, featuring Georgina Hale (who plays the wife of Gustav Mahler in this Ken Russell film) isolated in full mummy wrap and writhing with erotic yearning to the lush strains of her husband's music, Mahler distinguishes itself as the most poetic and archetypal of Russell's great-composer works. A kind of cinematic response to Luchino Visconti's 1971 adaptation of ‘Death in Venice’, (showing on Saturday morning - 27 August) Mahler stars Robert Powell as the great Jewish romantic from 19th-century Vienna, drafting enormous symphonic works in the midst of rising anti-Semitism.

Converting to Christianity as a means of survival, Mahler carries on with his work but experiences an erosion of his health and sense of identity. Meanwhile, his self-effacing spouse represses her own creative drives to keep the resident genius afloat, (also explored in ‘Mahler on the Couch’ showing on Mon 29 Aug 18.30 & Tue 30 Aug 15.30).

While the film is the least ostentatious of Russell's movies about music, it is hardly conventional - a mix of lyrical tableaux and comic fantasy that adds up to a stirring, dream-like experience.

Preceded by:

DANCE OF THE SEVEN VEILS:

A Comic Strip in 7 Episodes on the Life of Richard Strauss (1864-1949)

Russell regarded Strauss's music as "bombastic, sham and hollow", and despised the composer for claiming to be apolitical while cosying up to the Nazi regime. The film depicts Strauss in a variety of grotesquely caricatured situations: attacked by nuns after adopting Nietzsche's philosophy, he fights duels with jealous husbands, literally batters his critics into submission with his music and glorifies the women in his life and fantasies.

Later, his association with Hitler leads to a graphically-depicted willingness to turn a blind eye to Nazi excesses, responding to SS thugs carving a Star of David in an elderly Jewish man's chest by urging his orchestra to play louder, drowning out the screams. Comfortably his most extreme television film, its broadcast was preceded by a warning about its violent content, though it still caused widespread outrage and has been banned by the Strauss estate! So sue us! Christopher Gable (Richard Strauss), Judith Paris (Pauline Strauss), Kenneth Colley (Hitler), Vladek Sheybal (Goebbels), James Mellor (Goering), Sally Bryant (Life).

There will be a 15m interval between the 2 films with a complementary glass of wine. TICKETS £10 (to include a complementary glass of wine)

Happy Birthday Alex Verney-Elliott

2011-08-23T06:31:00.000+01:00

It has been my pleasure to have Alex Verney-Elliott as friend. He's everything you'd expect him to be and 9 million times more. Here are some links to his voluminous work as an artist and philosopher of all things from cultural dissonance to philosophy to Zizek to politics to the power structures manipulation of "HIV and AIDS". As his mundane day job, Alex is also a supreme sculptor and the most sought after authority on the artist Francis Bacon in the world.

Who fans will note he shares what is to me the most wonderful day of all, Keith Moon's birthday.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALEX!

Alex Alien Art, his website

A tribute he lovingly created to his late husband, Michael Verney-Elliott

Bacon, Lice & Gorillas Alex Russell talks about working on Louse of Usher and other matters

Interview with c ristiano lova telliravarino news

Reappraising Aids Day Letter to Gordon Brown 2008

Dedicated follower of fascism: Richard Strauss and Dance of The Seven Veils

2011-08-22T23:00:00.001+01:00

It is banned so watch it while you can. One section, #7 is missing. If you hate Nazis this is YOUR film. Even in pink bootleg sepia this is another Ken Russell masterpiece. The first ten minutes, especially the BBC voice over warning are priceless. I LOVE THIS SO MUCH. Some of Strauss' classics sounds like Andrew Lloyd Webber on crack.

Ken Russell - Omnibus: Dance of the Seven Veils (1970)

I was not sure which film to delve into next. I'd been thinking of jumping a decade or so after Mahler to Aria or even further to Lion's Mouth but today Ken made post on Facebook. "Dance of The Seven Veils" this long banned 55 minute film for the BBC Omnibus will be screened as a double bill with Mahler on August 28th at Chichester Cinema at New Park.

AND SO WILL KEN! He'll be there to introduce with his beautiful wife Lisi and to undoubtedly inspire more ballsy film-makers to kick more Nazi composer butt. I won't be able to be there to see what is to me, thee ideal double feature. BUT! I wish those lucky people who do attend all the best. So I am off to write my own piece on Ken's Richard Strauss film for later this week, till then here is a great take on it.

From the delightful essay The Forgotten Struswitz by David Cairns:

"Russell's composer films draw flack because they venerate and rejoice in the music while frequently ridiculing or exposing the foibles of the artists themselves. Dance of the Seven Veils is possibly Russell's most savage attack on a composer (apart from possibly his treatment of Wagner in Lisztomania, seen as Dracula, building a Nazi Frankenstein monster), but this film is not lacking in nuance, if one can speak of nuance in a movie where a troupe of critics are murdered with trombones (here, at least, Russell may be partly in sympathy with Strauss) and the composer has sex with his wife surrounded by a full orchestra. Russell paints Strauss as naive, hypocritical, sometimes well-meaning, arrogant, confused, talented, genuine in his pacifism, false in his claims to have kept the Nazis at a distance (cue shot of Hitler riding on Strauss's shoulders while both play violins) and generally complex, at least for a comic strip character.

Actor/dancer Christopher Gable, one of several Russell regulars in the show, plays Strauss with a caricature German accent and manner, but really comes into his own in long shot: this is one of the few Russell films where Gable really gets to dance, and he makes the whole film a ballet. Another dancer, Vladek Sheybal (the Fiddler on the Roof himself!) plays Goebbels. A funny thing about Goebbels: he always works in movies. There have been bad Hitlers, but never a bad Goebbels. Goebbels always works. Why is that?"

Mahler Wrap Party or we are going to live forever!!!

2011-08-21T23:34:00.007+01:00

MAHLER PART 10
MAHLER PART 11
MAHLER FINAL

As blogging about Ken Russell's "Mahler" comes to close for me, a formal feeling comes. There were radical upheavals in the world this past month, so much so that Mahler at times seemed like a world I longed to be in. Not as a character but simply inside the films colours and locations. The ending was beautiful. Unlike many, the boy on the train platform and the older man watching him with longing was the one highlight I did not care for. I'm not sure why. Perhaps there was too much humanity in it and as a paranoid parent I read "child abduction" into something completely charming. Just goes to show what the modern world can do to even the happiest person...

(below: what you get when you Gooogle : "Ken Russell Mahler Platform" )

Mahler's Komponierhäuschens

2011-08-19T01:16:00.009+01:00

Don't you want one?

Mahler's first hut at Steinbach, on the banks of Lake Attersee in Upper Austria.

Mahler's second composing hut, at Maiernigg (near Klagenfurt), on the shores of the Wörthersee in Carinthia.

I'll TUMBLR for Unkle Ken!!

2011-08-17T00:36:00.001+01:00

I'm not sure how Tumblr works...what is it? So far I can see that people get these insanely great photo gallleries going. And here is one about Ken!!

Albeit with a soupçon of envy

2011-08-16T23:40:00.000+01:00

(We talk a great deal on Ken Russell's You Tube clips Here are comments and some responses from You tube about Mahler that I really appreciated and enjoyed.)

I actually like slower films, like antonioni or traffaut. But there is something about Ken Russell that is magical. For me he is the closest thing to the bombastic silent film directors to make films in the sound era. I can totally imagine The Devils as a silent film.

langbry

Watched this yesterday and I'm still thinking about it. What it does that I've never seen anything else do as acutely is show two people, with the best will in the world, tragically failing to communicate because of the way their personal experiences have shaped their viewpoints. At the start they're so estranged that they seem like monsters of froideur. By the end we understand them and finally, they understand each other – thanks to music. [more]

JohnMoseley

A very interesting movie, combining seriousness with camp. Powell is very good as Mahler, and a few years later he played Jesus Christ in Zeffirelli's excellent "Jesus of Nazareth". I guess if you can play Christ convincingly, everything else becomes a cinch!
Thanks for uploading this!

What a travesty. Stupid,banal, tasteless and an insult to Mahler. the fact it's consciously banal doesn't make it any better. Oh yes so over the top it's hilarious but I am somewhere between tears and laughter. Ken Russell is the anti Tarkovsky
Pepperpiperwdiamonds

You raise an interesting thought; Ken Russell is the anti-Tarkovsky. By being so excessive at being calculatedly over the top, Russell allows the intellectual cinema viewer to have a good laugh at themselves Tarkovsky, on the other hand, is excessive at being ponderously serious. One arisian shows humanity as something tragic, the other as something laughable.
Thanks for the post and making me think about those two.
forloveoffilm

I actually saw the movie several times because of Robert Powell. It brought Mahler to my atention ant I beggined listening to his music. I also got interested in his biography. I came to appreciate both the composer and his music. Since I came to know and appreciate Mahler first of all because of this movie, I believe both Robert Powell and Ken Russel have done a great job, and the movie really reached its goal. To let people know about Mahler and his music.
daniilsihastrul

Thanks for the upload. I thought is was a pretty crude attempt, frankly. Russell reduces key points in Mahler's like to absurdity. I'm not sure a movie could do someone like a Mahler justice, even if it's one man's "vision" of this genius of late romantic / modern music. His relationship with Alma was for more complex than Russell gives us. Alma was far more than a simple "hausfrau." She was a highly educated and beautiful woman who had notions of a career in music herself.
flylooper
My response:
@flylooper Oh I saw immediately how incredible Alma was! Ken more than did her justice and I'm a Mahler newbie. Remember Ken had about 90 mins tell one of greatest most complex lives ever. He has to fictionalize, condense but ultimately the truth is there; this incredible genius fought his way into the highest echelons of art and dealt with crap anti-Semitic people and the deaths of his most beloved family members to "live forever".
BrickLaneBetty

I like the campy dream sequence bits, but it's almost a shame they're there because they give Russell this reputation for being a sort of trash king and overshadow the genuine intelligence of his story. Anyway, thanks very much for posting this.
JohnMoseley
@JohnMoseley He's campy but never trashy there is a difference. Madonna, Paris Hilton and Al Adamson are TRASHY. Debbie Harry, Jayne Mansfield and Ken Russell are CAMPY. But seriously, Russell transcends even camp-he operates with his own rules. Those dreamy scenes are actually the truth!
BrickLaneBetty
@BrickLaneBetty Agreed. I was thinking of an older sense of trash – sort of Paul Morrissey, Russ Meyer, early John Waters trash (and I like all those directors). I was talking about the reputation it gives Russell and this film in particular. Everyone talks about Wagner's wife in a Nazi helmet and that stops the message getting out that, as you say, it transcends camp and is in many ways, up there with the best of 60s European art house filmmaking.
JohnMoseley
@BrickLaneBetty Yup. It's a (bad) sign of the times that he can no longer get funding. He's also, as you would guess and hope, a fantastic bloke in person. Less to boast than because I think it might interest you (albeit with a soupçon of envy) a friend took me to dinner with him a few years ago in the Lake District. I talked about a short film idea I could barely articulate and he was brilliant at not making me feel like an idiot – as well as, of course, just being a great laugh.
JohnMoseley
@JohnMoseley Oh I'm not surprised. Ken and his wife Lisi are my friends on facebook and they are the two nicest public figures I've ever interacted with. And Ken has outlived everyone he's annoyed !
BrickLaneBetty

One Passport to Heaven: Savage Messiah, A Ken Russell site by Iain Fisher

2011-08-15T23:59:00.011+01:00

(I made a vow that I'd try avoid posting the work others regarding Ken Russell if at all possible but given our son's sudden aversion to daily napping, the Ken Russell ballet challenge and still recovering emotionally from the riots, I thought today would be a good chance to give a huge thank you to Mr. Iain Fisher who has created and maintained Ken Russell's website for over a decade. As Matt Kent is to The Who, Iain is thee expert. The Savage Messiah website is fabulous and Iain he has the dedication of a Watusi gun bearer. He's made it possible for devoted fans and the casually curious on seven continents to keep up with ALL of Ken's work. I would not be here having the time of my life without all of his hard work as a fan. Thank you Iain Fisher!)

"With two flops he needed a commercial success, so returned to classical composers with Mahler. Mahler from 1974 is a film about sacrifice and creativity. It starts with a dream sequence which is Russell at his best and most visual. A train journey provides a rite of passage. Mahler remembers episodes from his life, and on the train itself he confronts jubilant crowds (success), the gutter press (sensationalism), his wife's lovers (infidelity), and the doctor (mortality).

A beautiful film mixing true emotion, the death of Mahler's children, with dancing Nazis. At times Powell seems to be influenced by Dirk Bogard from Death in Venice with the similarities going beyond the direct homage included in the film.
The domestic sequences of Mahler as a child are similar to those in Savage Messiah.
The film cost just over 150,000 pounds and was shot in seven weeks. The American version was shortened by 30 minutes, mainly by removing the Cosima Wagner sequence.

Robert Powell plays Mahler and Georgina Hale his overshadowed wife Alma who literally buries her creativity. Oliver Reed appears in a cameo role as the railway guard- in the book Hellraiser Robert Sellers states Reed was given three bottles of Dom Perignon for the role. Dana Gillespie the singer (she recorded Bowie's Andy Warhol before Bowie did) plays Mahler's mistress, and she wrote the composition she plays. Photography is by Dick Bush.

Ken Russell includes a homage to Death in Venice.
There is a long train ride. Various nuns. A crucifixion with Nazis etc. Russell kitsch at its best.
The scenery is around Russell's former home in the lakes.
Mahler makes fun of Tchaikovsky's piano concerto just as in The Music Lovers."

reprinted from savage
messiah

A Ken Russell site by Iain Fisher

The Master and his Bear

Mahler Part Nine: Pork Sword Pas De Deux

2011-08-14T23:59:00.004+01:00

MAHLER PART NINE

"You had better convert to Catholicism quick Gustav or you'll never get laid in Poland..."

So here it is. Easily one of the best sequences in any of Ken's films.

THE MAHLER CONVERSION SEQUENCE!

Here Ken Russell raises the bar (ouch) almost too high for any film-maker whom ever deigned to believe they were camp, surreal and irreverent. There are so many B-film directors I admire with great respect from the 60s and 70s (Herschell Gordon Lewis, Roger Corman ) yet placed in their shoes I'd be very envious of this scene. Here is someone making a crazy film with superb cinematography, natural settings, psychoanalysis and some of histories most magnificent music! No guest spot for Colonel Sanders or 78 Mcup Chesty Morgan boobs in Mahler.

Though not a B film-maker and limited to small budgets, the great soft-core auteur Russ Meyer, borrowed quite a bit from this film for UP! which was up until then his most sexually explicit film replete with naked sex crazed Nazis. Russ, having fought in WWII HATED them. Henry Rowland the great Teutonic featured character actor who Russ Meyer often cast as the Nazi Martin Bormann, almost seems to have missed his calling here as Cosima Wagner's onscreen wife.

Here is the kosher version to watch as the sequencing on You Tube is cut. But of course

COMPLETE CONVERSION SCENE

"For some the strain is too great..." Mahler Part 8

2011-08-13T17:33:00.016+01:00

Mahler Part Eight

So much beautiful photographs in this scene. More of Chatsworth including a long shot of the Cascade Steps, foreskin role call and Alma Mahler buries her music in some of the most beautiful deep sea blue twilight ever captured on celluloid. Ken's deep greens and blues in Mahler are the stuff dreams and vintage fairy tale books from the early 20th century are made of.

Riots, Race and Ken Russell

2011-08-12T11:58:00.026+01:00

"I don't want to be permanent shit." -Oliver Reed

When the mainstream credits the value of Ken Russell's work ^__and only a few reviewers ever do^__they usually cite his "iconoclasm", his insistent challenge to "regimes of the normal," especially in regard to art, stylism and sexuality. Like other outsiders who to a significant degree have been "let in," ( in other words treated by the mainstream as an acceptable representative of an otherwise weird freaky group) Ken Russell is so much more than his non conformity.

If there was more (actually any) of Ken Russell's work on weekly rotation on the BBC or the ITV3 nightly film you'd have less violence like we are seeing all over England and London this week. People who are out of work, alienated, young, old, confused, curious and/or verging on primitive violence-they all watch television. You can't really value the world around you and the history that surrounds you in the UK, if EVERY single thing you watch is either the Family Guy, Embarrassing Medical Conditions or Reality TV. Even the Oliver narrated World at War which is to British Telly what PG tips is to tea, won't get you on a path, not any more. War stories and heroics which can never be duplicated and which make the past an impossible to recapture faded seaside postcard has bred Post modernism, new style anti-Semitism and revisionist history, into daily life and politics of younger working class people.

Ken's films gives one pride in Great Britain without any nationalistic wanking. Famous people, unknowns, places, music, fantasies etc all born of the UK and which sadly are not being talked about or taught in UK state schools, allow one to question everything. Most importantly they illuminate history. The great composer was a bully and raving egomaniac and yet he was still great. Another great composer converted to Catholicism because his music and his fame came before religion and ideology and he too was still great. The wealthy and elite are actually really messed up and while they aren't as great as the composers just look at how beautiful England is! This is your country.

A few people I've blogged with on many anti-racists websites have pointed out that while they appreciate the non-conformist aspects of Ken Russell's work that disappointedly there is "very little racial diversity in his films" so how could his work really "speak to a person of colour" living in today's Britain. Firstly, this simply is not true nor important nor will I waste my time pointing out like some bad 1990s diversity coach which person of colour appears in which Ken Russell film. What I will say is that watching Tina Turner in Tommy it is clear that she is without equal as a female rock singer (not pop, not soul but rock). Her videos in the 80's and 90's, while fiery, never came close to capturing what Ken Russell did. This is important because Tina Turner has received about a 10th of the credit that others with little talent to no talent like Madonna have. It is important that every artist gets that one moment that lives forever, where they are at their peak; Acid Queen is Tina Turner's defining moment where she becomes almost supernatural and on big screen no less. Watching it at the now closed UC theatre on University avenue in Berkeley, California, the entire multi-racial audience applauded after Tina's scene was through-and I mean applauded.

And while we are on the subject, I must ask why is featuring a racially diverse cast a prerequisite for creating art meant for the masses to interpret for themselves? Isn't it ignorant to assume that a "person of colour" has to be given art with a certain set of conditions to enjoy and get something out of? Ken's work is part of much larger group of creative artists who have refused to comply with conventional standards set by the narrow definitions of mainstream. His work opens doors to other all artists and possibilities. All great artists-even people crazier than Ken- are part of a common good that enriches and can potentially inspire all races, all classes and all genders. Give the public more of those creative forces and less of the garbage pedallers and you'll witness a brighter world-illuminated by knowledge and art not fire and destruction.

(The riots here in London knocked me way off schedule in my Ken Russell studies. We have not slept properly for about a week and things are finally (hopefully) settling down. Thankfully on Monday, August 8th, only a bin was set alight outside KFC and the packs of 40 and 60 looking for trouble in Bethnal Green did not find it. Dalston was different. We take the 236 often to visit family so it was very disconcerting to see that area hit. I realized through all of this how much I need the daily stability of this blog and how much this country needs the cultural intelligence apparent in Ken Russell's work.)

Mahler: Symphony No. 2 (Resurrection)

2011-08-10T20:36:00.000+01:00

From the Mondavi Centre in Davis, California. The UC Davis Symphony Orchestra, University Chorus, and Alumni Chorus present Mahler: Symphony No. 2 ("Resurrection"), with Arianna Zukerman, soprano, and Zoila Muñoz, contralto. D. Kern Holoman, conducting.

Full Circle for British Cinema

2011-08-09T20:24:00.001+01:00

Ken's sci-fi novel "Violation" is a very violent future-shock tale of an England where football has become the national religion. I have yet to read it but it seems to be in the same realm as Anthony Burgess, The Wanting Seed, another Dystopian tale of England. For that type of book, ground zero is "A Clockwork Orange.

And that aforementioned classic in British cinema came full circle tonight. After an almost thirty year ban in Great Britain due to fears of "copycat violence" Stanely Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange" was shown in 2001 uncut on Sky3. And in the wee hours of this very morning, as a Clapham fancy dress (aka costumes) store was raided and burnt to the ground by men in funny masks, ITV3 ran the film uncut as well. Fiction?

Mahler Parts Six and Seven: "I'm not dead yet!" and Cascade House

2011-08-06T04:16:00.002+01:00

Mahler Part Six
Mahler Part seven

Yes, this segment contains the funeral scene! Georgina Hale is astonishing and you feel as if you are going right into the Columbarium with Gustav. The precision and choreography is fabulous. The fab funeral sequence should not take away from the fact that there are also two very important scenes that flesh out the film here; Mahler's discussion with his two young daughters about God and Alma's rebuffed attempts at her own compositions.

Highlight: 6:54 Chatsworth House considered by many to be the most beautiful of all the English country estates serves as the Austrian palace grounds as Mahler and his sister try to gain acceptance as Jews. Addressing the Emperor as he sits in the Cascade House, Mahler does not seem so super human anymore. For him this is grovelling as he tries to convince the Emperor that he's actually goy enough lead the Vienna Opera and bring his unparalleled artistic brilliance to Europe's highest heights. Chatsworth's Cascade is a 300-year-old river of water gushing over 24 groups of steps. When I dreamed of coming to the UK no other heritage/landmark site apart from Big Ben held my interest more. I think I have never before seen something this beautiful on screen.

Mahler Part Five: In The Wilderness

2011-08-05T05:11:00.001+01:00

Death of the pitiless enemy

2011-08-04T23:59:00.012+01:00

My enemy has always been Trophy hunters, poachers and wildlife extermination in the name of corporations, fur trade and moneyed interests. The past few days or so saw me pulled away from Ken's Mahler and raging against this. I'm now catching up after missing a solid four days of Ken-ness.

Henri Gaudier-Brzeska Tiger 1913

Mahler Parts Three and Four: Look back in Skiddaw

2011-08-03T11:58:00.027+01:00

00:40, Powell looks more like Mahler than Mahler. Beautiful, cameo in deep pine green that becomes daylight on a moving train-just gorgeous. The crowds and their brass bands await Gustav at the station like a war hero but he's sick and can't be arsed. A flashback in the loo takes Mahler back to his years as a child; his large Jewish family having come up from working class to middle class in one generation; the kindly swim instructor slash mentor slash Joe accordion and the freakiest piano teacher since Dr. Terwilliker in the "5000 Fingers of Dr.T". Yet, Skiddaw, the great mountain of the Lake District steals this section. In my mind I know I'm looking at England yet how and why I can only see Eastern Europe/Germany/Austria is a mystery. Ken is a master and that is why he can create such cinematic alchemy.

Highlight: The supine swim scene and parental rage was ripped/paid homage to in "Immortal Beloved."

Time for a Ken Russell Challenge!

2011-08-02T23:54:00.007+01:00

I've started Ballet lessons five days a week after a few years lull and after not seriously studying since I was about seven. I had nearly four years, stopping right before secondary school. This will be an ongoing challenge with updates. I'm in so much pain I could swim in Nurofen. One can't really delve into Ken's work without having at least some rudimentary knowledge of the Ballet. He trained in Ballet religiously for four years in his 20s and the discipline (in my opinion the most difficult to master of ALL the arts) and dancers are in nearly all of his films.

So onwards and upwards, grand battements and Fouetté rond de jambe en tournant we go!

Mahler Part Two aka "How I had plenty of tunes until you killed them all!"

2011-08-01T05:12:00.002+01:00

The writing chalet that we saw metaphorically ablaze at the film's opening is now as calm and cool as an Andes thin mint bar on ice. Don't you want one?

Mahler's wife Alma was a spurned composer and yet she's still willing to silence all the cow bells, the men in lederhosen and even the lonely goatherd to get Gustav some peace and quiet. What a joy it must have been for Ken to work on this film. What a beautiful sequence. Dirndl and trachten come true in the Lake District. As Blondie once sang, my dream is on the screen.

Highlight: Is the Pumpkin man straight out of The OZ books an allusion to what Mahler faces as an outsider in Vienna?

The Chrysalis-Mahler Part One

2011-07-30T03:59:00.002+01:00

(Took yesterday off for a birthday celebration. As I get more knowledgeable I am going back and noting which Mahler symphonies are used in which part of the film.)

Gustav Mahler is as great as Mozart or Bach was, perhaps even more so. Ken's film Savage Messiah which we'll cover later was stunning but I think I love Mahler more. That is saying quite a bit as Savage Messiah is a masterpiece. The magnitude of what Mahler's music is and who the man was is conveyed within every frame. He is not only the bridge between Romanticism and Modernism but he himself was a bridge between old world and post industrial revolution Western Europe. I almost need to wait to watch Mahler again, I don't want to be reminded that I don't live in such a beautiful world of forests, conservatories, demi glasses of chilled Gewürztraminer and cascade houses.

First things first-Georgina Hale owns as Alma Mahler. Robert Powell rules too but without Hale for him to play off of this film would not hit you as hard emotionally. Powell is a great actor, severely underrated, but he's also gifted with insanely fine and beautiful features that most women would envy (he played Christ) and an intrinsically graceful carriage. I can think of no one better to play Mahler and he makes it look easy. But Hale must fight genetics and she triumphs. There is no A List actress in Hollywood today or then, who could play this role-not Nicole Kidman. Not even Glenda Jackson or Helen Mirren. Georgina Hale's very tiny breasts, thin lips and large forehead are insanely sexy. She's also a natural dancer and her voice crackles simultaneously with humiliation, self confidence and passive aggression. Mahler is her film. By the end she had been so many different women: loyal wife, adulterous wife, failed artist, desolate mother, tormentor and best friend that we know Alma Mahler is real.

Watch Alma as Mahler's shadow of death. 8:12

A great blog post on Mahler

2011-07-28T02:16:00.004+01:00

Here is a beautifully written piece I came across on Mahler by a blogger, photographer and scholar named Thomas Pindelski.

Life With Mahler contains one of the best assessments of the film I've read thus far.

"Life without him is not living.
How can anyone live without Mahler? Standing at the cusp between the classical romanticism of Tchaikovsky and Schubert and the atonality of Stravinsky and Berg, he changed music as we know it. Whether through his beautiful songs or his massive symphonies, one’s understanding and appreciation of nature is raised an order of magnitude through listening to his works." Thomas Pindelski.

Prelude to Mahler & Ken Russell's Composers

2011-07-27T23:55:00.002+01:00

(Before we dive into watching MAHLER I thought it would be useful to have some background on who he actually was. Many of these composers were simply names to me, having grown up loving mostly Rossini and Beethoven. Tchaikovsky's music was the only one of Ken's film subjects who I'd heard extensively. I'm literally in Kindergarten when it comes to the history of classical music so please bear with me.)

We tend to think of composers as 16th, 17th and 18th century but as seen below, many of the greatest walked among us relatively recently. (Seems like being born in the summer does have its advantages as well.)

Franz Ritter von Liszt              (October 22, 1811 – July 31, 1886)
Wilhelm Richard Wagner        (22 May 1813 – 13 February 1883)
Anton Bruckner                      (4 September 1824 – 11 October 1896)
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky         (May 7, 1840 – November 6, 1893)
Sir Edward William Elgar        (2 June 1857 – 23 February 1934)
Gustav Mahler                        (7 July 1860 – 18 May 1911)
Frederick Delius                     (29 January 1862 – 10 June 1934)
Claude-Achille Debussy          (22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918)
Richard Strauss                       (11 June 1864 – 8 September 1949)
Ralph Vaughan Williams     (12 October 1872 – 26 August 1958)
Béla Bartók                            (25 March 1881 – September 26, 1945)
Bohuslav Martinů                    (December 8, 1890 – August 28, 1959)
Sergei Prokofiev                    (23 April 1891– 5 March 1953)
Gordon Jacob                        (5 July 1895 – 8 June 1984)
Georges Delerue                    (12 March 1925 – March 20, 1992)

A Brief Biography of Gustav Mahler:

Born in the village of Kalischt in what was once the Austria-Hungarian Empire and now the Czech Republic, Mahler was true Bohemian and a German speaking Jewish one at that. He recalled years later always "feeling as an outsider". As a composer, he serves as a bridge between the 19th century Austro-German tradition and the Modernism of the early 20th century. While in his lifetime his status as a conductor was established beyond question, his own music gained wide popularity only after periods of relative neglect which included a ban on its performance in much of Europe during the Nazi regime. After 1945 his music was re-discovered and championed by a new generation of listeners; Mahler then became one of the most frequently performed and recorded of all composers, a position he has sustained to this day.

Mahler was the oldest of six out of fourteen surviving children. His father, Bernhard, was a tavern owner and his mother, Marie, was the daughter of a soap maker. Shortly after Mahler was born, he and his parents moved to Iglau, Moravia. His father was able to open a successful tavern and brewery which allowed him to support Mahler’s musical ambitions.

Childhood:

Because Mahler lived close to the town square where frequent concerts were given by the military band, he developed a taste for music at a very early age. Iglau was then a thriving commercial town of 20,000 people where Gustav was introduced to music through street songs, dance tunes, folk melodies, and the trumpet calls and marches of the local military band. All of these elements would later contribute to his mature musical vocabulary. He learned various songs from Catholic school friends and received lessons from local musicians. It wasn't long after his father's purchase of the piano when Mahler became proficient at playing becoming a child prodigy.

Teenage Years:

As a result of Mahler's poor performances in school, his father sent him to audition at the Vienna Conservatory. Mahler was accepted in 1875 under Julius Epstein with whom he studied piano. While in music school, Mahler quickly turned to composition as his primary study. In 1877, Mahler enrolled in Vienna University where he became fervently interested in great literary works and philosophy. Biographer Jonathan Carr says that the composer's head was "not only full of the sound of Bohemian bands, trumpet calls and marches, Bruckner chorales and Schubert sonatas. It was also throbbing with the problems of philosophy and metaphysics he had thrashed out..." Sadly many of Maler's earliest attempts at compositions did not survive this era as he destroyed them himself.

Early Adult Years :

At the young age of 21, Mahler received a conduction job in the Landestheater in Liabach. He conducted over 50 pieces including his first opera Il Trovatore. In 1883, Mahler moved to Kassel, signed a contract and worked several years as 'Royal Musical and Choral Director' - it may have been a fancy title, but he still had to report to the resident Kapellmeister. From 1885-91, Mahler worked in Liepzig, Prague, and Budapest.

Mid Adult Years:

In March of 1891, Mahler became chief conductor at the Hamburg Stadttheater. While in Hamburg, Mahler finally finished his second symphony in 1895.At the Stadttheater Mahler introduced numerous new operas: Verdi's Falstaff, Humperdinck's Hänsel und Gretel, and works by Smetana. However, he was forced to resign his post with the subscription concerts after poor financial returns and an ill-received interpretation of his re-scored Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Mahler had made it clear that his ultimate goal was an appointment in Vienna, and from 1895 onward was manoeuvring, with the help of influential friends, to secure the directorship of the Vienna Hofoper.He overcame the bar that existed against the appointment of a Jew to this post by what may have been a pragmatic conversion to Roman Catholicism in February 1897. Two months later Mahler was appointed to the Hofoper, provisionally as a staff conductor with the title of Kapellmeister. Also, in the same year, Mahler's younger brother shot himself. Since his parents had died several years before, Mahler became the head of the household. To protect his younger sisters, he moved them to Hamburg to live with him.

Late Adult Years:

After his appointment was confirmed in October 1897 Mahler remained in post until his resignation in November 1907. In the ten years for which he held office he directed the productions of more than 100 different operas, of which 33 had not previously been staged at the Hofoper and three were world premières. Another 55 were presented in either entirely new or substantially revised productions. In all, almost 3,000 performances took place at the Hofoper during Mahler's tenureAs the new director at the Hofoper Theater, his daring, provocative, and controversial performances attracted great numbers to the theatre and many press reviews. In 1907 and 1910, Mahler conducted the New York Philharmonic and Symphony Orchestra. A year later, after returning to Vienna, Mahler died from bacterial endocarditis.

Selected Works by Gustav Mahler:

Symphonic Works

Symphony no. 1 - D Major - 1884
Symphony no. 2 - c minor - 1885
Symphony no. 3 - d minor - 1893
Symphony no. 4 - G Major - 1899
Symphony no. 5 - c sharp minor - 1901
Symphony no. 6 - a minor - 1903
Symphony no. 7 - b minor - 1904
Symphony no. 8 - E flat Major - 1906
Symphony no. 9 - D Major - 1908
Symphony no. 10 (unfinished) - f sharp minor - 1910

Sources: About.com Classical Music.

and Wikipoopia

MAHLER

2011-07-26T23:33:00.001+01:00

MAHLER (1974).

We will journey back within Ken's oeuvre to cover Elgar and the BBC Monitor films but for now, I feel it is appropriate that we arrive at one of Ken's colourfully sensuous cinematic masterpieces. Within Gustav Mahler's fairly short life span is the example of the artist as
1. Cultural bridge
2. Brutal perfectionist
3. Shape-shifter (not to be misconstrued as a "preening dilettante")

Mahler may be known as a composer but in reality composition was not his first love- conducting was. His own œuvre is considered small by classical standards and excepting for one piano quartet, confined to the genres of symphony and song. His ten symphonies are very large-scale presentations, several of which employ soloists and choirs in addition to augmented orchestral forces. Upon their respective premières, Gustav Mahler's works were considered controversial and were slow to receive critical and popular approval; an exception was the triumphant première of his Eighth Symphony in 1910.

I was fortunate to see the Bath Symphony and Bath Festival Chorus perform Mahler's 8th on my birthday May 29th, 2000, even sitting in for the dress rehearsal at Bath station. I had just come from the Lake District ( Derwentwater and Borrowdale where much of Mahler was shot) I was thinking a lot about Ken and buying his biographies so it really was a full circle moment. The sound was phenomenal!

This entire next week will be all Mahler.

Delius and The Artist as Survivalist

2011-07-25T23:59:00.078+01:00

(Due to the world events of the past few days, I took a few days off to try to make sense of the senseless. I am thankful for the peace and sanctity that myself and my friends and family enjoy. If you live in London then Amy Winehouse is like family and we lost a daughter on Saturday. If you believed as I once did that Northern Europe had attained within it's borders the most peaceful society in the world then Norway is a paradise now lost. So much freedom was just shattered for so many and yet through art and the examination of what great art is, we begin to find solid ground amidst the unravelling of the human experience. A way to regroup away from the static via a journey through the artist's way. Back now to Ken Russell who is our guide.)

(Contains film plot spoilers)

If "Delius, Song of Summer" conveyed one important lesson to me it was that certain artistic geniuses are survivors and others are not. We think of all the great artists dying young but this simply is not the case. I think the single focus will to continue onward in the face of depression, self hatred, heart break, addiction, hounding and even being rejected by the public is perhaps preordained by nature. It is at least unexplained as much as being gifted is.

Delius was willing to live through the horrible and debilitating disease of Syphilis so that he could continue composing. His living spirit was bolstered by being demanding, rude and annoyingly honest. A German minder would haul his usually ungrateful ass upstairs to comfort and safety when he said so. He never faltered when it came to composing. He never faltered when being a supreme and wholly charming egotist too. I believe it was Delius's super human focus on his art that led Fenby to be such a harsh critic of his own work. Perhaps he felt he could never measure up to Delius or perhaps he simply felt his talent was put to better use as an amanuensis par excellence. This is a shame, as Fenby sadly destroyed many of his early compositions which would have undoubtedly found an audience today.

Jelka Rosen, Delius's wife proves my recently made point about gender differences in artists. Unlike Delius, Amy Winehouse was alone when she died. Yes, a minder was in the house but no one lay next to Amy in bed to perhaps realize she'd stopped breathing in time to save her life. Delius lived to be 72 and Amy 27. Male artists have women who will do anything for them and be there till the end, NEVER walking away or leaving for too long. Few female artists get that luxury as most men are too selfish and yes, too sensible to live in the shadow of a crazed genius.

But if art knows no frontiers than it also knows no pity and no vanity in death. We cry, we mourn, we pity but subconsciously we know they were in part geniuses because they were not afraid of death. All great artists have regret and fear-fear is an essential component to life and even lust and romance-but when faced with paying the highest price of all we want our artists as heroes or anti-heroes, never as martyrs. After a quick review I realized that for my most cherished icons of artistic genius, a long life has been won. Paul Robeson, Pete Townshend, Sophia Loren and Ken Russell.

Robeson faced down the destruction of his global fame, his art and then his personality via electroshock at the hands of four doctors all later proved to be CIA contractors. He lived the last decade of his life in Philadelphia, a melancholy and weakened man but a defiant and unapologetic one. Outliving all the henchmen of the red scare including J.Edgar Hoover and Joseph McCarthy himself. As far as battles go that would kill the less hearty, Pete Townshend has competed only with himself to all manner of results. Looking astonishingly younger than his years despite suffering many of the same addictions Winehouse did (and recovering) one never knows what he'll do or say next. I do think he'd like to live forever if he could.

Sophia Loren continues to break new ground regarding how sexually enticing a woman can be as she ages in the eyes of media and a global patriarchy that still wants women terrified of ageing. As a very young child living in extreme poverty she living through the bombing of Italy and the Four Days of Naples uprising. War and death was a daily reality of her childhood not an imagined concept as it is for most of us.

Ken too has survived and at 84, looks to outlive everyone. He drinks champagne, enjoys his chocolate when his wife Lisi says so and seems to have magical genes. I think he's survived because as he's put it, he's always been a voyeur. Watching and not joining in is a lifesaver. Some make the back ground music for the soundtrack of the world while Russell has made the actual films that accompany the music. It sounds simplistic but hear me out. Ken said himself he never pushes his working class background, does not appear too political or to esoteric. His genius is to bring the world, it's follies and it's colours to life; the geniuses like Delius back from past, the human experience eyeball to eyeball with our own. I could see Ken being just as feisty today as Delius was, with a line of hopeful amanuenses stretching around the block were he making a new film.

One last key element of all truly great artists (survivalists or not) is mystery. Despite my devotion as a loyal uber fan there is a great deal I will never know about the lives of the artists I revere. They will remain people whose "coats have thousands of pockets". It goes without saying or explanation why this is so critical.

Amy Winehouse had that too.

...us Brits!

2011-07-23T05:03:00.020+01:00

"I did have a couple of brushes with the police-once for jaywalking in Westwood and once for driving too slowly in the fast lane. Both times I was let off with a caution after the cops heard my accent. They think us Brits are barmy, out there, with our bangers and mash and croquet and cream teas. And yet they don't know us at all. Mention the word 'English' and you'll get a muffin. That's our greatest contribution the the American way of life-the English muffin. England is an eccentric little place best known for its Beefeaters, Royal Family, beef tea and Gilbert and Sullivan. And whenever I saw rare flashes of England through the TV looking glass, that's how it appeared to em-a dusty character from HMS Pinafore and Alice in Wonderland, endlessly parading around in circles and squabbling at some Mad Hatter tea party."

-Ken Russell on his stay in the United States during making of Altered States.

Delius will never win the loving husband award: Art and gender differences

2011-07-22T23:37:00.001+01:00

Wow. Talk about your rude starter husband! Delius gives unsolicited advice and unabashed humiliating treatment to his loving and devoted wife who is pushing his ungrateful carcass about. It is as if she's not even there but he knows she is!

Sadly many artists CAN'T be in relationship-much less a marriage. They are simply too narcissistic, too moody and too busy to be decent partners. There are more great male artists when one looks at history as a whole primarily because men won't put up with being mistreated BY an artist. Whereas many women, once they have children, have no real choice if they expect some kind of family structure. Men are not able to have children so they can be free. Also many woman choose to follow artistic men around, be there shadow, blog about them everyday etc It is rather fun!

I respect many a crazy artist- be they camp director (Russ Meyer), rock (David Lee Roth) or A-List actor (George Clooney) who does not have any children. That shows serious self reflection.

Ken Russell has eight children, six boys and two girls and in his auto-biography he admitted his failings. He can't have been all bad as they've all added him on Facebook.

Delius for Dinner

2011-07-21T07:53:00.000+01:00

In this scene Delius tries to pull rank even though he's already the centre of the world. Max Adrian would have been given every major award if this had been done on the big screen. Old people are unapologetic manipulators and love to be the centre of eveything (hey, most of them have earned the right!)Fenby does not even get a chance to respond or even talk. When he finally does he finds he's been pre-empted...

And now.....

2011-07-19T23:59:00.002+01:00

Anyone else remember Father Russell ?

2011-07-18T06:34:00.005+01:00

(I guess you could say NSFW but actually it really is very tame. Still, the mood and theme would most likely offend your curious tattle tail workmate frenemies far more than actual porn would)

Fenby has had to navigate through his new part within the script of Delius's life and he's trying to get back to "Catholic base camp." Watch Gables' Fenby carefully. He comes into the Cathedral like he's co-owner. He's been so patient with the angry blind atheist genius yet he's back where he belongs, albeit for only a few moments. For the life of me I can't figure out if Ken is speaking Latin, talking dirty or simply making indecipherable sounds on purpose while he's "on the job" as they say in the East End. The sound quality is sharp and recalls listening through a wall and wondering what is going. Is that two people having sex or just talking? Both? Neither?

Like the evil Circe woman earlier in the forest, Ken's fancy woman is mysterious with a mean edge (she did just get pre-empted after all). She dashes off, her wooden heels echoing. At 00:40 Ken Russell rises from the floor, business as usual, and we see evidence of his late but dedicated Ballet training. His priestly bearing is actually that of an older, mirror image of Fenby's posture and attitude. Fenby doesn't flinch but he's simmering with cross resignation. Nowhere in Delius's bohemian forest is really safe for a Catholic boy from Yorkshire but he goes through the motions.

Fenby has to keep it bottled, he signed on after all.

I found this last night and feel it goes with this post despite being unrelated to Ken's work. "Don't Pinch Me Padre" written by Joe Fitz this song uses photo images to look back at a time of innocence and the effect of the Vatican child abuse sex crimes on his song writing.

Delius Song of Summer

2011-07-16T23:33:00.000+01:00

"I want you to imagine we are sitting on the cliffs of heather and looking out over the sea. The sustained chords in the high strings suggest the clear sky and stillness and calm of the scene...You must remember that figure that comes in the violins when the music becomes more animated. I'm introducing it there to suggest the gentle rise and fall of the waves. The flutes suggest a seagull gliding by."

-Frederick Delius

(posting very late tonight, still coming down off of LoveBox with my husband!)

Florida Suite By Delius and Women in Love

2011-07-15T05:16:00.003+01:00

These two clips go great together. This won't be a spoiler if you have never seen Women In Love, easily considered by the mainstream, Ken Russell's masterpiece (for me this ties with Savage Messiah) and should (along with savage Messiah) be the first films any Ken Russell novice sees. I took one newbie friend to "The Music Lovers" followed by "The Devils" at The Castro but that was REALLY jumping in... and they loved it.

With so much bad news always coming from Florida one mustn't forget Big Cat Rescue and the millions of wonderful people in the sunshine state. When Delius was becoming something of a Trustrafarian high on Ibsen and art so his father sent him to America to manage an orange plantation in Florida. Delius ended up high on Negro spirituals and Black workers singing and never got in the mold. His time spent there was later recalled in his work, Florida Suite. Florida Suite is comprised of four movements: Daybreak, By the River, Sunset, and At Night. This video is "By The River." The Youtuber has accompanying photographs representing the people and places that made up the Old Florida that existed before the invention of Air Conditioning contributed to the population explosion that so changed the state.

Delius' Irmelin Prelude for Leiby Kletzy תפלת הדרך

2011-07-14T05:50:00.001+01:00

In memory of nine year old Leiby Kletzy. תפלת הדרך

A good luck prayer in Hebrew for a traveller. Safe passage to this young boy who was taken so shockingly from the world this past week. May he rest in peace and all the little boys and girls of the world be safe.

The Pretty Vodyanoy or that neighbour in the forest in the Song of Summer

2011-07-13T06:10:00.004+01:00

In Ken Russell's "Song of Summer" which we are discussing this week, there are many incredible moody and uncomfortable moments which make the viewer feel as if they are actually living in the Delius home. One spooky moment takes place outside the home in the surrounding French forest where Fenby is abruptly stopped by a woman hidden by some trees. If you scroll through to 45:00 you'll find it and it won't spoil the plot.

The woman is languidly persistent in her questioning of Fenby, sensual and really creepy. She wastes no time in being invasive and manipulative. She reminds me of the Slavic water spirit Vodyanoy. Though she's on land she has that same stealth. One worries that Christopher Gables might be whisked away by the ankles and never seen again.

Vodyanoy (or Vodyanye) are wicked treacherous Slavic water creatures. They may assume any form they choose. They live in fresh water. They never die but do grow older at the waning moon and younger as it waxes every month. Whenever the Vodyanye do manage to drown someone the take them to serve them as slaves in their magical underwater palace of crystal.

Can you say amanuensis? Got Delius?

2011-07-12T05:09:00.001+01:00

Amanuensis (pronounced /əˌmænjuːˈɛnsɪs/) is a Latin word adopted in various languages, including English, for certain persons performing a function by hand, either writing down the words of another or performing manual labour. Literally translated it means "manual labourer".

You'll want to think about this term carefully as it describes one of the most interesting characters in all of Ken Russell's films: Eric Fenby. From 1928 to 1934, Eric Fenby was the amanuensis and the eyes for the composer Frederick Delius. If you are not familiar with Delius just as I wasn't before watching Ken Russell's "Song of Summer" (1968) you are really in for a treat. One who is not a classical music expert listens to a classical music station and can usually pick out Bach, Mozart and of course Beethoven but then other names pop up who are just as pivotal and they draw a blank. With Ken Russell's film catalogue, you triple your knowledge of composers and artists.

I don't want to give too much more away only that this film is beautifully photographed, Paul Robeson's signature song makes an appearance and Ken Russell himself gets down (literally) in church. Eric Fenby (a composer himself) is played by the marvellous Russell perennial, Christopher Gables in his debut role, giving what I feel is beyond Oscar worthy acting. He had previously been a dancer with the Royal Ballet and it shows. The real life Eric Fenby himself was a consultant for the film and requested to leave the set during rehearsals once because it flooded him with so many personal memories. He broke down after watching the final film and took the better part of year to get over the feelings that he said he'd repressed about their time together. When you see the film you'll understand why. Max Adrian as Delius is that man that scared you as a kid and is as manipulative as only an elderly person can be. He did not break my heart nor make me feel for his character's issues but I was in tears at the end.
One of Ken's most well received works. PLEASE WATCH, you will be moved. I'll be discussing "Song of Summer" all this week. 111 minutes long and the print transfer to You Tube is great.

Ken Russell's Indecent Exposure

2011-07-11T05:15:00.006+01:00

He can sing too!

"And Ken Russell really did it this time. He stripped the lid of respectability off the Ursuline convent in Loudon, France. He exposed Cardinal Richelieu as a political schemer. He destroyed our illusions about Louis XIII. We are filled with righteous indignation as we bear witness to the violation of the helpless nuns, which is all the more horrendous because, as Russell fearlessly reveals, all the nuns, without exception were young and stacked." - Roger Ebert's review of The Devils, 1971

Oh Roger, you wrote how many Russ Meyer film scripts? Besides as proven in my last post, we all know that Ken Russell is not a big breast fetishist like you and your best friend Russ. Furthermore a few pauses on the VCR (The Devils is hard to find on DVD) reveals that Ken's Ursuline convent nuns comprise a wondrous assortment of breasts in ALL sizes and shapes.

To paraphrase the great historian Martin Duberman, a biographer's job is to tell the truth to the extent that inevitable gaps in the evidence and subjective distortion will allow for it. The biographer is not responsible for how others manipulate that truth to serve agendas of their own. So it is safe to state that those who despise Ken Russell for exposing in blazing glorious colour, the more unsavoury sides of European high art, religion and history will always manage to find grounds for justifying their hostility and worse not giving him the credit he so justly deserves as an artist.

I was fortunate to take courses from a well respected film professor whom never mentioned Russell once amongst the many world class directors he introduced us to. When I mentioned the subject of "Ken Russell the stylist" he made little more than exasperated sounds. The world's top film critics have uttered far worse.

Yet even some Brits who feel deeply impressed by Ken's homages to England and who give kudos to his genius experience discomfort over his unwillingness during the Altered States era to become a commercial giant, making money hand over fist. Like the trustafarians who now come out in droves to Columbia Road, Hoxton, Brick Lane and Spitalfields each weekend and then whisk home to Belgravia, Chelsea and Kensington, they want the "street cred" that Ken brings but don't want to look at his truth. This same attitude can be found in many big show biz names and most of the Young British Artists for whom amassing money and social climbing- not sexual, racial, artistic or gender liberation- remains the ultimate pursuit.

This discomfort needs to be directly addressed, along with the underlying assumption that feeds it: namely, that all big budget films about European history-actually anything Western European in general- should be ultimately positive and comforting, for everyone. Should they dare point out racism, barbarism and/or sexism it has to have a redemptive factor (even if the hero croaks) because that makes money and feeds the myth. You get paid and then you are safely part of the club. The credits can't simply roll as the Christian old bill fries ala The Wicker Man. (Hence Hollywood's unbearably bad remake of Robin Hardy's cult classic featuring Nic Cage as a secular police investigator.) I got this same vibe from the recent April 28th Stuart Jeffries piece on Ken in The Guardian. Jeffries may be a lovely bloke but within the piece he came off just a tad too patronizing for my comfort level. But Jeffries did at least bring up the fact that film critic for the Evening Standard Alexander Walker, called The Devils "monstrously indecent."

"But how much sex is too much sex? Does the answer hinge on the number of different partners involved, the number of encounters with the same partner, particular configurations (three-way or group sex, say) or particular sexual acts (anal intercourse, say, or sadomasochism)? The answers will hinge on individual assumptions about what is "normal," "healthy" or "moral." In this country (The United States) numbers alone are likely to settle the argument: The higher the figure, the more brows start to furrow-even when we are talking about consenting adults." - Martin Duberman, 1998

We need to take a closer look at what most people in our culture mean when using the designation "indecent" (the charge Russell's detractors most often aim at him that is, when they are not denouncing the "excessiveness" of his work). Three definitions currently predominate: "Indecent" is something offensive to good taste; offensive to public moral values and, someone who acts exploitative, nasty and unlawful, especially in sexual matters. Hence the term "indecent exposure."

None of those definitions, I strongly feel, apply to Ken Russell. Firstly, what is "offensive to good taste" and what are the examples? Has Ken Russell stuck a Barbie doll or a hot wheels car up his bum for a live audience? Has he dropped racial or homophobic slurs in the press? Beaten people to a pulp? And as far as "public morals" are concerned, are we talking about The Festival Of Light? The Catholic Church? The Socialist Worker? The BBC? The Royal Family? Jackass? Who makes the rules of what constitutes public morality? Mostly heterosexual white males review (as well as direct) films, and if you read between the lines of nearly SIXTY years of popular film review and film-making, monogamous white, female to male pair-bonding is the optimal path to human happiness and "public morality." Ken's films show that great artists, misfits and women as a whole are not drones for the aforementioned corporate myth.

As far as Ken Russell's films being "nasty" and "grotesquely indecent" I've found nothing in his films that resembles this because his work, while occasionally very campy is never exploitative. In fact given the subject matter (and the beautiful women he casts) many of his films actually hold back on what could have been very explicit portrayals of sex-be they for art or simply if he wanted to make money. Russell believes in sexual mystery, sensuality as well as not playing his actors AND audience for fools. Women, Gays, Lesbians and people of colour are not stupid nor are they exploited in Ken's films as they are Adrian Lyne, Oliver Stone and Alan Parker's work.

Fainting couch al fresco.

I argue often about the fact that grown women in cupcake costumes, sucking on lollipops and attaching sex to small children's motifs in music videos is indecent. I'm always accused of being a "prude" , "jealous" and even of "slut shaming" because many can't simply see that "fun and quirky" doesn't apply when you attach sexuality to children's imagery or when raunchy behaviour comes to define a female public figure's persona. Taking advantage of cheap, guttersnipe culture shots via his imagery is something Russell has never done (even in his recent low budget films) but which is now out of control in the media under the guise of "female empowerment." Granted a naked or raunchy women in public IS very, very powerful even a plain one -at least in regards to how much attention she can attract-her exploitative exhibitionism will gain more of a reaction (and therefore an "appraisal from society") even if it is wholly neagtive. The plain or even stunningly beautiful woman doctor who saved a life at her local hospital that same day will be ignored and unknown. Russell knows the inherent power in a naked woman's body like the back of his hand and yet does not exploit it in a creepy fashion. By the time Ken Russell has shocked you, you're either laughing too hard, too dazzled with beauty or simply asking yourself "what the hell was that?" to feel cheated. Quite decent a fellow if you ask me.

With Ann-Margaret on the set of Tommy.

Ken Russell and The Female Form

2011-07-10T21:01:00.010+01:00

Beauty mortally wounded. "Aria" Puccini's, Turandot segment featuring sumptuous British pin-up model Linzi Drew.

My take (censored) on Ken Russell's Nessun Dorma

Oliver Reed and Glenda Jackson, Women in Love 1970

Ken's film direction embrace all trim female shapes. His actresses do not have one set look or body type. After being a fan of the Russ Meyer aesthetic (massive preferably natural breasts, a tiny waist and hips about ten inches wider than the waist but not wider or as wide as the chest) I'm definitely a convert to Ken's far less rigid standards. Don't get me wrong, he has exacting preferences as all male directors do for female beauty but Ken respects the individuality of the actress's physique (as much of a tool of the trade as the voice) rather than forcing each woman into an inflexible, prescribed archetype.

Ken Russell's lead actress usually have extensive dance training (many of the extras in his films are classically trained ballerinas or move like them) and are required to dance in some capacity. Many walk, run, fight and dance naked too. And despite purposefully shooting Glenda Jackson's topless scenes when she was further along in her first pregnancy, unlike the rest of western civilization, Ken Russell does not put a premium on big breasts. Helen Mirren, though not a dancer, appears equally as gracefully as the human ascending and descending nude in "Savage Messiah" who strikes one deliciously figure flattering pose after another.

Here is a selection of Ken's beautiful actresses with links NSFW:

Michelle Phillips "Valentino" 1979

Hourglass Goddess Helen Mirren

Dorothy Tutin in a non Ken Russell film

Dorothy

Above: Tutin in a non Ken Russell film

Georgina Hale, Ken Russell perennial
Georgina Hale as Alma Mahler

Ken Russell: Portrait of riding crop carrying cult leader?

2011-07-09T07:52:00.003+01:00

This watercolour portrait of Ken Russell always used to intimidate me. It captures his spirit but does not really look like him. There were many Ken Russell books at the library and this was one of them back when I was about sixteen and mostly new to film criticism and director biographies. I did know of Ken albeit very little. Before I knew how sweet and wonderful he is I thought he was combination of a mean Erich Von Stroheim type film teacher, Matthias from Omega Man, the corrupt Quaker from Star Trek episode, "All Our Yesterdays" and a cult leader. Ken has always seemed to have had his platinum white hair and wild clothing so he's never really aged. You have to admit this painting is a trip. I had not seen it since I was sixteen.

Where Corals Lie from Elgar's Sea Pictures

2011-07-08T05:40:00.004+01:00

(Empirically speaking, had it not been for Ken Russell's tireless advocacy Elgar would never have been rediscovered and the classical music world would be less British. This is the first of many posts on Ken Russell and Edward Elgar.)

Due to Ken Russell's lively documentary on Sir Edward Elgar, the composer who had been mostly forgotten as a "Pro-Empire style cultural relic" (I hate the word Jingoistic!) became a beloved icon even landing on the 20 pound note for a few years. Subliminally his music is the soundtrack for today's England.

"Where Corals Lie" is a poem by Richard Garnett which was set to music by Elgar as the fourth song in his glorious six song-cycle Sea Pictures. Having studied this cycle as a Contralto for many years, I feel that Corals is the most challenging of all the pieces to sing. Dame Baker's voice is so clear, so effortless in modulation that in many ways no other contralto dare not attempt it again. And she was reputedly even better live!

Elgar's soaring and joyous compositions are now heard at every graduation ceremony in the United States and in countless films. Ken's film for BBC Monitor became "one of the most popular films of its kind ever shown on TV, and contributed to a marked revival of interest in the composer's music." [http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/audiointerviews/profilepages/russellk2.shtml Ken Russell] The film was narrated by Huw Wheldon and was eventually selected as on of BFI's "100 Greatest British Television Programmes."

Ken Russell's Self Portrait of an Enfant Terrible from SouthBank

2011-07-07T02:47:00.008+01:00

I thought I'd never find this! Ken's interpretation of his own autobiography for The South Bank Show presented by Melvyn Bragg. Who fans will remember his great interview with Pete Townshend from the 1970's in which Mr Bragg wears a duck egg blue ruffled tuxedo shirt. Great 80's opening theme and décor.

For those new to Ken, it is worth taking a half hour so and watch this (part 5 was pulled in the US unfortunately but is visible here in the UK). Fans who have not seen this here it is! You'll see many of Ken's rare early films for the BBC REJOICE IN JOYOUS CELEBRATION!!

This is something very special.

Ken Russell's Whore and Human Avarice -Part One

2011-07-06T00:31:00.011+01:00

(Gardenia and the Mighty Slug. The sublime and talented Theresa Russell in Whore. I have a vintage 80's strapless mini dress in the exact same fabric as her jacket)

(As I delve deeper into Ken's work I'll be continuing this and various other posts in a progressive format so they can eventually be read as complete posts)

If like me you are tired of reading about child killers walking free, double murder suicides and zoo animals being killed then may I please direct your attention to a scene by scene comparison of Ken Russell's "Whore" and Gary Marshall's "Pretty Woman."

Yes. You heard me correctly. And I'm not the only one.

Within this comparison one actually begins to get a clearer picture of the hypocrisy and the built in avarice of so called "civilised western society." Far more relevant than a Sunday supplement "so what went wrong" style article this comparison shows how mass market culture is designed to make people oblivious to pain and suffering. Whore, based on the play by Black cab driver David Hines, is a realist portrayal of the life of a prostitute in LA. Upon its release the film baffled critics while, Pretty Woman, a romantic comedy topped all the best of lists for 1990 and garnered an Oscar nod and super stardom thereafter for Julia Roberts.

The first appearance of Roberts in Pretty Woman is a dated-when-it-came-out looking 80's Mtv video sequence where, via a series of body doubles, she is getting dressed in what could easily be Euro clubwear (Vintage Men's smoking Jacket, velvet French painter's cap, cutaway dress, thigh highs) slowly and seductively to go out and work the mean streets of Hollywood. In Whore, we see a tunnel, traffic and Theresa Russell dressed to turn tricks in clothing (silver spangled bra, red leopard velvet Jacko Jacket and micro mini) only a hooker would wear is standing outside of it.

Hot and confident Richard Gere has been dumped yet again by a woman for being a marriage-aphobe workaholic. When Julia Roberts gets into his car he's charming, flirty and respectful. And within three minutes he's asked her to drive his lawyer's 50K Lotus because he's taken the time to find out in her childhood she was a tomboy who read car magazines and he can't drive a stick!! His eyes soften as they say goodbye, initially just wanting Julia to "show him how to get to Beverly Hills" Gere now wants more. Within fifteen minutes she's flossing in his hotel bathroom and watching "I Love Lucy" reruns. The morning after he's sexually serviced, a five star breakfast is waiting for her, she has his cash for endless shopping and they are talking about "his work."

Meanwhile on the street, Theresa Russell is the recipient of foul verbal abuse when she thwarts a john who wants to sodomize her and a potentially deadly ride with two men who throw her onto the cement. Add to that a homeless nut (Antonio Fargas) who self harms for money and her vivid flashback to being brutally gang raped by a group of young men in a van and there we have Whore's first TEN minutes!

The New York Times gushed over Pretty Woman:

"Yes, yes, the 80's are over. But isn't there room in the time capsule for ''Pretty Woman,'' the romantic comedy about a lovelorn corporate raider and a sweet, wholesome streetwalker from Hollywood Boulevard? This one truly deserves a place. It is something special... Julia Roberts, who is so enchantingly beautiful, so funny, so natural and such an absolute delight that it is hard to hold anything against the movie. " Janet Maslin

Ahhhh, the most repressive era of American culture since the 1950's is ending, Kurt Cobain will blow his brains out before the decades half over, bombs will be dropping next year but can't we all put on our shell suits, go to the sushi bar and wish we were Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman?

"Once the ice is broken, it is time for the film's true raison d'etre to emerge. ''Pretty Woman'' isn't about sex, but about conspicuous consumption... he sets Vivian loose on Rodeo Drive with his credit cards in hand. Edward escorts her personally and enters one boutique, declaring, ''We're going to be spending an obscene amount of money in here.'' One evening, Edward takes Vivian via limousine and private jet to the opera in San Francisco, borrowing several thousand dollars' worth of necklace for her to wear.Everything in the movie has a price tag."

That my friends is some sick shit. Maslin is emphatic that prostitution and the risking of ones life that it entails is not the reason why Roberts' character is living the fantasy high life. Maslin simply sees prostitution on the same plane as a shopping spree or a fancy dinner.

Vincent Catty Canby on Whore:

"The movie certainly doesn't glorify the profession. It confirms one's suspicions without adding to one's understanding. Mr. Russell treats Liz's story without any of the spectacular directorial touches for which he is known. It's difficult to tell whether this was an artistic decision or one dictated by a limited budget." Vincent Canby

It takes a blogger(aka writing out of love not money and social climbing)like J to the Power of 7 to nail it:

"It isn't pretty or glamorous, is it? How much value is attached to the life of a prostitute? Ask the King County sheriff's Department and the Seattle Police Department--they allowed the Green River killer to run riot for 20+ years thanks to their own rampant hatred and bigotry towards prostitutes. That hatred also exists throughout our culture and in the minds and attitudes of many Americans.This is a pure film for Ken Russell, and a compassionate statement for the victims of prostitution, namely, the whores." J to The Power of 7

To be continued and fine tuned tomorrow

Five vunderful reasons to watch Valentino

2011-07-05T04:35:00.012+01:00

(Below, Natasha Rambova (Michelle Phillips) and Nazimova (Leslie Caron) enter the then uncharted realms and untold coolness of mass film star mourning.)

(The other male full frontal Ken Russell scene. Rudolph Nureyev and Michelle Phillips, cultural icons of the 1970s in the silken flesh. (NSFW but so worth it!) This is the Russian version and the dialogue is "dubbed" Soviet Style ala the translator talking over the actors...)

When I was about seven, my Mum took Ballet classes for a few years and then made me take them. I resisted at first (I was very tall for my age so it felt awkward) but now greatly appreciate the experience. Mr. Rudolf Khametovich Nureyev was a household word and adored by Mum who sketched his handsome Tartar face in charcoal. Ken Russell's Valentino was thus on repeat in my house from the time I was seven till I was about eleven. I thought it was amazing. When I grew up and read that there were people, including Ken Russell himself who had thought it was a big mistake well... I was shocked! I don't begrudge Ken's choice in thinking it was a career misstep but here are my five reasons to why everyone should see Valentino at least once:

1. Nureyev: Easily one of the best looking men that ever lived and one of the most unique as well, he's never looked more beautiful. He's not an film actor but he's fun to watch. And let's give credit where it is due; no male Ballet dancer has approached Nureyev's talent and persona since. In Valentino one can see that he possessed a body without any tension and had the flexibility (and complexion) of a carefree two year old. Not bad for a dancer who started his professional training at 22!

2. Costumes: Shirley Ann "God" Russell is without equal and she is missed by the countless people she gracefully touched. The costumes in Valetino run the gamut of the 1920's and many look like Maxfield Parrish or Erte paintings come to life. Today's vintage fanatics are far too obsessed with the 50s and 60s. If you want the sublime, the detail, the melting decadence then you want the 1920s. And if you want the 20s or to learn about the fine art of costume design and vintage reproduction clothing then you have to watch Valentino as well as track Shirley's unparalleled life and career as a costumer and so much more.

(Shirley Russell must have loved the above carpet's colour scheme. Rudolph's tomb Russian cemetery in Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois near Paris. Mosaic by Ezio Frigerio.)

3.Older kids interested in film history and dance can watch the film: watching films like Valentino which did have nudity and adult situations but were mostly tame, did not harm me growing up. In fact 90% of what children/teens are seeing on video games and music video is far more explicit and even worse-not artistic or creative in the slightest. Granted my parents were artists but if it is between Michelle Philips in a break away kaftan or Miley Cyrus in an ASDA SnM dress (or worse aka The Only Way is Essex) then you only have yourselves to blame Mums and Dads!

4.The 1920s as seen in the 70s: The 1950's, what with Happy Days, America Graffiti, Grease, Big Wednesday etc, seemed to be the decade that returned in the 70s but a closer look at many ads, clothing, art works, children's toys and even hair and makeup and it is evident that the 20s was also a very strong cultural influence. No film encapsulates the decadence of the 20s as seen via the lush over-abundance of 70s RussellVision, like Valentino.

(Above: A fresh scent of 1920s whimsy in the 1970s, The Barbie Perfume Maker)

5. Cinematography: Peter Suschitzky's lush work has not lost an ounce of lustre in over thirty years. Many films from that period look mottled and dingy but Valentino still has that same radiance as the first day I saw it and decided that a cloche hat and Theda Bara eyes were the keys to eternal stardom whilst getting my pics snapped while in heated missionary position by those pesky newshounds!

Ken Russell has like reinvented the post-it!

2011-07-04T05:02:00.016+01:00

(Above) The tiny empire waists strike back-MUST see payback penultimate scene from R&MHR.

(R&MHR final scene)

"The glamorous, vulnerable and “totally cutting-edge” duo Romy and Michele, played by Mira Sorvino and Lisa Kudrow, those inseparable flatmates bound for their high-school reunion with exaggerated resumés and loveable optimism. No, I haven’t miscounted. It’s a tribute to their ability to complement each other’s performance that their double act in Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion (1997) makes them unforgettably one."
-Ken Russell, London Times 2007

Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion is one of Ken Russell's top ten favourite films. As he's a human monument to high art, obscure references (references that grow ever more obscure as the world dumbs ever downer) and is a creative genius this choice comes out of left field to many. Ken has seen over 75 years worth of films thus I have no doubt that many of his most loyal fans don't really believe he'd embrace a big budget, 80's nostalgia film and that he's simply having us all on. What did I think when I read that?

Did not surprise me a bit.

After all, "Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion" features many key Ken Russell elements: the 40's stylized blond (Elaine Hendrix), young women navigating through the wilderness years (Mira Sorvino and Lisa Kudrow), the petty Bourgeoisie exposed (the reunion scene) , a Gay actor refreshingly cast as straight (Alan Cumming) and of course a well choreographed modern ballet dance!

Notice something? The words "silver makeup", "giant throbbing phallus" or "Nazi strumpet" are not mentioned. Ken Russell is all things folks.

The dialogue is wonderful in how it proudly celebrates self deprecation and honesty which a film like Adam Sandler's recent "Just Go With It" failed to do. Sandler, Nicole Kidman and Jennifer Aniston**-all very talented-were so self conscious about looking hot and being really, really funny that there were no surprises, no human element essential to all great comedy films and even the C word spewing Derek and Clive recordings. Sandler filled in the void with tired, lame racist humour, Hollywood infommercial abs and little kids with REALLY abysmal cockney accents.

"Chunderooney" as they say in the East End.

Ken is spot on when he likens the Kudrow and Sorvino acting to "one" entity. Indeed, each acts as the others "that little voice" which we all have inside our heads. Full Metal Jacket and the duality of man? No, ask Jung about Romy and Michelle instead. In Ken's gloriously sensual pro-female empowerment film, The Rainbow lead Ursula Brangwen (Sammi Davis) longs for Winifred Inger (uber fox Amanda Donohue) to be Michelle to her Romy. But alas, Winfred is strictly a "with benefits" type of friend even vying for the title of sexiest "frenemy" in film history.
(Amanda Donohue in The Rainbow)

The scenes in RMHR towards the films end where people's true feelings and (gasp!) , their actual incomes and marital standing is revealed don't make the viewer laugh haughtily for too long. Those scenes are more of a documentary, one that everyone can admit to relating to. As the snotty popular crowd is taken down to soccer mom rubble with nothing more than the simple truth and self worth in the form of "I don't give a flying fuck what you think" we all have a cinematic example of how to save ourselves a hundred grand in therapy. Rewind the three minute scene multiple times and you'll see what I mean.

As for the film's axis of evil, Christie Masters (played brilliantly by Julia Campbell) she walks the earth off screen to this day as Lauren Joness, my arch enemy in secondary school (what we yanks call "middle" or "Junior" high). You dream of putting someone like Lauren Joness in a pit with Jules Burchill* and giving the latter a rusty pen knife and an eight ball of miaow-miaow but even that does not suffice in personal satisfaction.

Quite possibly the most vile human I've ever encountered, as young as 12 years old, Lauren, a new comer to the tony town of my childhood, lived to torment her peers who had less money and weaker social standing; picking them apart with the sort of uncalled for brutality that Hermann Göring would have respected. One Spring day Lauren dropped a few really foul names my way and within a split second her eye was blackened with every ounce of Berkeley anti-establishment power I could pack into my 12 year old fist. I believe she later became a débutante in high school ironically due the fact I wouldn't deign to "tell on her." Her pleading that she'd "be beaten" by her father if she were "ever suspended" because it could give her a "bad record" made me shed a tear for her. As evidenced by Romy and Michele, the kids on the bottom of the school hierarchy are the one's with the hearts that actually function.

After moving away I kept up with Lauren's "adventures" which included (surprise) becoming even nastier. Last I heard she'd married young, had children and was wearing pearls around her neck in her Facebook profile pic. And soon, if all goes well with the latest bit of "magic", a throbbing 20 foot white phallus like worm with silver eye makeup and an iron cross between it's eyes.

(Molly Russell and Christopher Gables in "The Rainbow")

*Jules Burchill, a Janeane Garofalo tribute act if there ever was one. A high compliment by the way!

** Janeane Garofalo's character in the film continually torments a cowboy, Jason Theroux, who today is now Jennifer Aniston's handsome boyfriend.

KEN RUSSELL 'S BIRTHDAY IS TODAY!!!!!!!!!

2011-07-03T00:59:00.002+01:00

Gothic

Rainbow

Elgar

HAPPY BIRTHDAY KEN RUSSELL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The films that Super Amanda dreams of Ken Russell making
(all biographical films unless otherwise stated):
Paul Robeson
POOL group
King Arthur Opera by Purcell
Iannis Xenakis
Bernini
Gelsey Kirkland
Ruddigore by G&S
The Tale of Samuel Whiskers aka The Roly Poly Pudding Ken and Lisi to star as Samuel and Anna Maria and respectively.
The Light Princess 19th Century fairy tale

A Brief History of The Universe: The Not So Basics of Ken Russell

2011-07-03T00:44:00.000+01:00

Here is to my best knowledge the majority of Ken Russell's work. I'm sure I will be adding to it shortly. Thanks to Iain Fisher for his great research which helped me immensely in starting this project.

Ken Russell's world is very beautiful and remember...

He's not perverted. YOU are!

Fledging films, photography and student projects:
Teddy Girl photographs
Peepshow (1956)
Knights on Bikes (1957)
Ken Russell's Lost London Rediscovered: 1951–1957
Amelia and the Angel
Knights on Bikes 1957
Lourdes 1958

BBC Monitor short films
Poets London 1956
Gordon Jacob 1959
Guitar Crazy (also called From Spain to Streatham) 1959
Variations on a Mechanical Theme 1959
Two Painters 1959
Portrait of a Goon 1959
Marie Rambert Remembers 1960
Architecture of Entertainment/Journey into a Lost World 1960
Cranks at Work 1960
The Miners' Picnic 1960
Shelagh Delaney's Salford 1960
A House in Bayswater/ Mrs Stirling of Old Battersea House 1960
The Light Fantastic 1960
Antonio Gaudi 1961
London Moods 1961
Lotte Lenya Sings Kurt Weill 1962

BBC Monitor long form films
Portrait of a Soviet composer 1961
Pop goes the Easel 1962
Preservation Man 1962
Mr Chesher's Traction Engines 1962
Elgar 1962
Watch the Birdie 1963
Lonely Shore 1964
Bartok 1964
The Dotty World of James Lloyd 1964
Diary of a Nobody 1964

Major works for film and television

1960s
Elgar (1962, TV) included as it is widely considered Ken's first important film.
French Dressing (1963)
The Debussy Film (1965, TV)
Always On Sunday (1965, TV)
Isadora Duncan, The Biggest Dancer In The World (1966, TV)
Dante's Inferno (1967, TV)
Billion Dollar Brain (1967)
Song of Summer (1968, TV)
Women in Love (1969)

1970s
The Dance of the Seven Veils (1970, TV)
The Music Lovers (1971)
The Devils (1971)
The Boy Friend (1971)
Savage Messiah (1972)
Mahler (1974)
Tommy (1975)
Lisztomania (1975)
Valentino (1977)

1980s
Altered States (1980)
Crimes of Passion (1984)
Gothic (1986) ·
Aria (1987, segment "Nessun Dorma")
Salome's Last Dance (1988)
The Lair of the White Worm (1988)
The Rainbow (1989)

1990s/2000s
Whore (1991)
Prisoner of Honor (1991, TV)
The Secret Life of Arnold Bax (1992, TV)
Lady Chatterley (1993, TV)
Mindbender (1995, TV)
Dogboys (1998, TV)

Later independent films, television and cameos
The Lion's Mouth (2000)
Fall of the Louse of Usher (2002)
Brothers of the Head (2006)
Colour Me Kubrick (2006)
Celebrity Big Brother 5 (2007)
A Kitten For Hitler (2007)
EastEnders (????)

Opera and theatre productions
The Rake's Progress (Stravinsky)
Madame Butterfly (Puccini)
The Italian Girl in Algiers (Rossini)
La Boheme (Puccini)
Die Soldaten (Zimmerman) 1985
Faust (Gounod) 1985
Mefistofoles (Boite) 1989
Princess Ida (Gilbert and Sullivan) 1992
Salome (Richard Strauss) 1993
Weill and Lenya (Paris and Russell) 2000
Mindgame (Anthony Horowitz) 2008

Films unfinished, declined or planned but never made
Moll Flanders
Evita
Maria Callas Bio Pic
The Rose

Books By Ken Russell:
A British Picture (1989; published in the US as Altered States: The Autobiography of Ken Russell, 1991)
Fire Over England (1993; published in the US as The Lion Roars)
Beethoven Confidential
Brahms Gets Laid
Elgar: The Erotic Variations
Delius: A Moment with Venus
Mike and Gaby's Space Gospel

Biographies and Film Criticism about Ken Russell:
An Appalling Talent: Ken Russell, John Baxter (1973)
Ken Russell: The Adaptor as Creator, Gomez, Joseph A. (1976)
Ken Russell (Monarch film studies), Thomas R., ed Atkins (1976)
Ken Russell: A guide to references and resources Diane Rosenfeldt (1978)
Ken Russell. Phillips, Gene D. (1979).
Ken Russell's Films by Ken Hanke (Oct 1, 1984)
Phallic Frenzy: Ken Russell and His Films (Cappella Books) by Joseph Lanza

Ken Russell: Re-Viewing England's Last Mannerist, Flanagan, Kevin M.,ed (2009)

Savage Art 101: A Year of Ken Russell

2011-07-01T05:15:00.004+01:00

For an entire year and a day, July 3rd, 2011 until July 3rd 2012, I am going to be blogging every single day about the life, the art, the insanity, the genius, the sparkling blue eyes and much, much more of Henry Kenneth Alfred "Ken" Russell, easily the world's greatest film director and auteur.

As discussed in the lead up post, I've decided to "go back to school" and learn from the best there is sharing the positivity, craziness and great knowledge that any scholar of Ken's has to delve into. I'm going to live some of it too. I've become far too nebulous and soft as an artist after having my first child and need a swift kick in the arse. I probably know about a third of what Ken's done (his history and work is mammoth) so while I'm a diehard fan I'm not an expert which makes this a true project. Much of my blogging will be biographical of Ken and what inspires him. This will include daily snippets of film history, quotes, artwork, music and a few surprises. I plan on introducing many of my teen/early 20 something friends to him as well and publish their responses. Ken Russell's books "A British Picture" and "Fire Over England" are highly recommended and will be referenced here though I will avoiding the half dozen or so, as yet unread to me, Ken Russell bios. Biographers often favour a tell-it-like-it-was account that make their subjects accessible human beings rather than pedestalized deities-I prefer BOTH and all that lies in between.

So I do hope all Ken Russell fans who are on blogger will join in. I hope to make new fellow Ken fan friends and create many converts to his art as well. There is truly no one else like him and his work speaks to everyone. For those of you who love Ken Russell, he is on Facebook here and here and his official website is Savage Messiah run by Iain Fisher. His wife Lisi Tribble is one of the most delightful people I've ever met online. Lisi and Ken have kindly allowed many of his clips onto You Tube and even his most obscure and rare work lives again. I do ask all my fellow Ken fans who can afford it to please buy official copies. All artists need to get paid and if there is a Ken Russell "boomlet" then film budgets will follow.

There will be a scholarly weekly in-depth essay and a "Ken Russell Physical Fitness" challenge here too. (The latter may involve donning art deco hair and makeup and playing croquet in Commedia dell'arte costumes whilst drinking Moet Chandon.) I'm also working on a Ken Russell encyclopaedia (please contact me if you'd like to help) though due to how voluminous his oeuvre is and how eventful all the names, dates and places connected to him are the limitations of publishing on blogger may preclude me from offering it. Once I passed 500 entries I realised that I should seriously consider going back and finishing my degree. After all if there are punters getting PHDs on the socio-political implications of working at Starbucks and the engineering of inverted firkins then why not a Doctorate in Ken Russell?!!

SO HERE WE GO!!!! Lace up your toe shoes, pop a fig, grab a thigh bone off the Klaus barbie, let your bits sway in the sunshine meadows and run in terror from the movie theatre when the plucked chicken appears (actually an iguana)!! LET US RESURRECT, RE-EXAMINE AND RE-SKEWER THE GREATS JUST AS KEN HAS! Let there be no classical composer or artist neglected and nary a silver phallus left unturned!!

WE ARE RUNNING OUT OF CHAMPAGNE AND THOSE WHO WATCH CRAP TELLY AND RUBBISH FILM MUST BE SAVED-- OR LIQUIDATED! PREFERABLY ON A DEVIL'S POSTPILE IN BORROWDALE!

HELP CREATE A WORLD LESS TIGHT ASS NOT MORE JACK ASS!!

KEN RUSSELL IS GOD!!!!!