Louis Feuillade’s extraordinary ten-part silent serial of 1916, running just under eight hours, is one of the supreme delights of film–an account of the exploits of an all-powerful group of criminals called the Vampire Gang, headed by the infamous Irma Vep (Musidora), whose name is incidentally an anagram for “vampire.” Filmed mainly in Paris locations, […]
Tag: Vol. 16 No. 51
Issue of Oct. 8 – 14, 1987
Posted inArts & Culture
Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers
What Jonathan Richman chooses to sing about (martians, adolescent infatuation, nudist commune farmers, baseball players, etc) isn’t necessarily as important as the way he sings it. Convinced that the 30 years of rock ‘n’ roll evolution toward increasingly louder and louder bands (culminating in the current indie infatuation with ugly noise) is one big fat […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Boom Bashing
To the editors: In response to the July 31 article by Julie Phillips: Your baby boomer bashing upsets me. Not because I am a baby boomer, which I am (though I am closer to your age than to that of those 40-year-old “has-beens” you declaim as being so self-absorbed), but because you’re missing the point […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Stage Scene: a new Organic faces the future
Die, die, Lavinia, and thy shame with thee, And with thy shame thy father’s sorrow die! With these words, Titus Andronicus, the tragic hero of the Shakespeare play that bears his name, murders his only daughter, Lavinia. The murder is a desperate attempt to reclaim a sense of honor that Titus felt was lost when […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Puke Rock
To the editors: Just a note to add to the compendium of “great noises of rock ‘n’ roll.” One of America’s most fabulous rock ‘n’ rollers, Wayne County, with his Anglo/American band the Electric Chairs, released in 1977 a cover of the Rolling Stones’ “The Last Time” in which Wayne actually (and quite audibly) tosses […]
Posted inFilm
Birth of a Notion
LES VAMPIRES **** (Masterpiece) Directed and written by Louis Feuillade With Musidora, Edouard Mathe, Marcel Levesque, Jean Ayme, Delphine Renot, Stacia Napierkowska, Fernand Hermann, Renee Carl, Louis Leubas, Louise Lagrange, Moriss, and Bout de Zan. I am convinced that surrealism preexisted in cinema. Feuillade’s Les Vampires was already an expression of the 20th century and […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Idealism and Endurance
To the editors: I found Julie Phillips’s article (“Boomed Out”) [July 31] very entertaining, and heartily agreed with it. If anything, I would only fault her for not going quite far enough. Not only do the baby boomers seem to believe that they “invented coming of age and still hold the patent,” they also seem […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Monty Alexander
In baseball, it’s not unusual for a promising rookie hurler to struggle for years until he puts it all together and turns into Sandy Koufax; it happens in music too, except instead of Koufax, you get Monty Alexander. About five years ago, Alexander graduated from being a glittery, facile pianist to a full-fledged, no-doubt-about-it keyboard […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Boom Goes On
To the editors: A special message to Julie Phillips [July 31]: you’re my kind of girl. “Baby boomers” have held the cultural floor a little too long now, and you’ve pointed this out with wit and style. It’s no surprise to hear you’re as sick of hearing about the 60s as I once was of […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Arsenic and Old Lace
ARSENIC AND OLD LACE Shubert Theatre Serial murder, euthanasia, slasher psychopaths, bodies buried in a crawl space, face-lifts for people trying to change their images, the cyanide poisonings of innocent strangers–it’s a tabloid-rotten world we live in. Not like the good old days, when crime didn’t pay and virtue was its own reward. Except that […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Tactical Tree-Spiking
To the editors: Thank you for publishing Peter Friederici’s sympathetic story on Earth First! (Calendar, September 11). One point needs to be clarified. Friederici writes: “Earth First! gained a radical image in May, when a California sawmill employee was severely injured by a spike that had been driven into the tree he was sawing. (Earth […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Balancing Act
You can bet that whenever a rock band picks up acoustic guitars, some unimaginative bozo is going to stick it with the tag “folk-rock.” But you can do more with an acoustic guitar than be a folkie; you can also rock with beautiful, catchy, breezy songs full of cool/weird lyrics like “Lay yourself on the […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Devaluing “Fascism”
To the editors: The Reader’s Guide to the Silver Screen of September 25 describes Dread, Beat an’ Blood as a “film about the recent rebellions of black people in England against racism and fascism.” The reference to “fascism” devalues and impoverishes language. The writer threatens to transform fascism into a meaningless term of condemnation. Ben […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Straight Dope
I have utter and absolute trust that the earth is a sphere. And yet I have never had any personal experience that would convince me of this. I have accepted it as a matter of faith. As someone said, “Common sense is what tells us that the world is flat.” For all I know from […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Bork Is Worse Than His Bite
To the editors: In just two brief sentences, Michael Miner [Hot Type, September 11] encapsulates the discussion revolving around the confirmation of Judge Bork to the Supreme Court. He refers to those of us who believe in the “amplitude” of our Constitution and to Bork’s writings which view it as a “niggardly” document. We’re confident […]