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Savage Messiah: Ken Russell => Savage Messiah: Ken Russell => Topic started by: Iain Fisher on January 06, 2009, 12:36:20 PM

Title: Ken in The Times 2009
Post by: Iain Fisher on January 06, 2009, 12:36:20 PM
Art for art's sake; money for God's sake

Ken in The Tiimes today 6 Jan 2009

Ken looks at starving artists: “Art is its own reward, but it has always helped to have a generous patron”.

“Starving artist syndrome is the lot of those obsessives among us for whom the desire and drive to devote ourselves to creative expression outstrips our income… For art is a powerful and intoxicating addiction to creativity. No artist ever really takes a day off. To create something that wasn't there before, to make a slice of the imaginary real and to get lost in the focused intensity of it may well be the ultimate joy…. It takes a lot of courage to be an artist. The comforts of stability may never belong to the person who is absorbed in an internal struggle to bring forth something ineffable, something beyond words but true nonetheless.”

Then Ken looks at individual artists:

And a couple of artists Ken has filmed
Title: Re: Ken in The Times 2009
Post by: Iain Fisher on January 13, 2009, 09:40:49 PM
Nothing by Ken today.
Title: When it comes to TV, fiction is truer than fact
Post by: Iain Fisher on January 23, 2009, 10:42:56 AM
Ken in The Times, 20 Jan 2009

Ken reflects on fiction versus reality TV such as Big Brother “There was a time when so-called reality entertainment was the exception rather than the rule, particularly in television. No more. Now it's unavoidable, in the genre I call “Gloat TV”….

Where are the myriad works springing from the imagination? Scripts by such writers as Charlie Kaufman, Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard, Tony Kushner, David Mamet and Woody Allen are being forced to the back of the queue. Yet they're the ones who give us the strength to shoulder our portion of the human condition, to laugh at our foibles, make sense of our contradictions, accept our limitations and reach doggedly for our greatest possibilities.”

Ken looks at fiction “There must be a reason that Buddha and Jesus conveyed their most profound teachings in parables, or fictional stories…  Stories are our soul containers, our initiations into a higher perspective. In them we carry our values, our lessons for living, our hopes and dreams, our felt remembrance of humanity as a noble experiment. Stories give us a glimpse of why and who we are. Without them, we feel separate, unrooted, restless, isolated, mistrustful. Through stories, we remember history, communicate feelings, honour the individual and better understand the world which nurtures and redeems us while it also tries and tests us.”

Then Ken tackles some films:

Title: We're all able in our own ways, so vive la difference
Post by: Iain Fisher on January 28, 2009, 01:47:37 PM
Ken in The Times, 27 Jan 2009

Ken praises an installation in Wolverhampton about disabled people.

“…I urge you to go to the Wolverhampton Art Gallery to see the artist Simon Mckeown's elaborate state-of-the-art digital installation called Biodiverse: MotionDisabled. Mckeown uses motion-capture picture technology, 3-D animations of the performers as well as of their props (such as toothbrushes and telephones) and 50in video screens to present, with wit and verve, a series of movies featuring the everyday actions of those coping creatively with differently abled bodies.”

“…Mckeown would be the first to agree that it is more descriptive and accurate to call the disabled differently abled, given that he has filmed remarkable performances of actors whose physical specialities have given birth to amazingly agile adjustments..."

Ken points out that he was one of the first directors to use differently abled actors in Tommy “…with a variety of wheelchairs and surgical appliances, to portray acolytes coming to worship in the Church of Marilyn Monroe. “

Biodiverse: MotionDisabled is at the Wolverhampton Art Gallery (www.wolverhamptonart.org.uk (http://www.wolverhamptonart.org.uk)), to 9 Apr 2009
Title: Re: Ken in The Times 2009
Post by: Iain Fisher on February 04, 2009, 10:17:12 AM
Because London was snowbound I didn't get my Times yesterday, but there is nothing by Ken in the aniline edition.

Iain
Title: If you want to get ahead, get a Piers Atkinson hat
Post by: Iain Fisher on February 11, 2009, 01:25:28 AM
Ken in The Times, 10 Feb 2009

Ken writes about an exhibition of hats in London's V&A museum.  I find it difficult to be moved by hats, so how did Ken do to move me?

"Hats can disguise, complete a look, define a personality, weave a spell. They can make people laugh or create a party mood. There are even tinfoil hats to keep out the aliens and government hypno-waves... When Aretha Franklin sang My Country 'Tis of Thee last month at the US presidential inauguration, everyone left humming the hat - an emphatic grey felt with a giant rhinestone-encrusted bow."

"...But the biggest scene-stealer of all would have to be any creation by the young Piers Atkinson, who is working on his third collection at the moment, to be unveiled this month. He has attracted the approval of Jones, who has invited Atkinson to display two hats in his forthcoming V& A extravaganza.

"See his hats on www.piersatkinson.co.uk (http://www.piersatkinson.co.uk) and tell me your life isn't changed.".  Ken, my life has not changed. Sorry this summary is so short.

Hats: An Anthology by Stephen Jones is at the V&A, London www.vam.ac.uk (http://www.vam.ac.uk), 24 Feb- 31 May 2009.
Title: The Mug is a book by lovers for lovers of books
Post by: Iain Fisher on February 17, 2009, 05:54:34 PM
In The Times today Ken looks at a new book by sculptor and artist Sarah Lucas and the artist and poet Olivier Garbay, The Mug.

"It's a 750-page... provocative illuminated manuscript for the postmodern pilgrim... a not-for-children alphabet book, starting with A... You can dip and choose from entries, but it's reading the whole shebang that delivers the maximum impact".

"Colour photographs of Lucas's and Garbay's art pieces, snapshots and portraits weave in and out among poems and sardonic wordplay. Modelled on William Blake's illustrated books and S.Foster Damon's A Blake Dictionary, The Mug traces a path through innocence and experience, sex and semaphore, mysticism and the mundane."

"Lucas once made and sold real mugs with Tracey Emin at The Shop, which they ran together for six months. At the most recent Art Car Boot Fair, Lucas and Garbay sold their own limited-edition mugs"

"Lucas and Garbay tapped into the same vein that T.S. Eliot uses in The Wasteland, ancient references combined with modern slang - a secret language to turn on the code-breaker in you. There are even French phrases that are mercifully not impenetrable. (“The spine of The Mug is the same size as my French/English dictionary,” Garbay says.)"

"... On a recent February Day of Apollo in St John's Restaurant, my wife Elise and I raise mugs with Lucas and Garbay. Despite their arty pedigrees, they are convivial, unpretentious, engaging and generous. Garbay talks - in French, in English, in leaps and bounds. Lucas talks, too, and grins and wiggles her orange-wellied toes. The two of them clearly love each other, grabbing opportunities to embrace with the joy of reunion. (Lucas lives in Suffolk much of the time; Garbay makes London his base.) I feel the weird spontaneous urge to embrace them myself. They are in full possession of their own talents and visions, and profligate with good feelings. This is what artists should be like. Audacious, magical, conspiratorial, fearless... Having lunch with them is like celebrating with Hansel and Gretel that the evil witch has been shoved into the oven."

"The story goes that Matisse was the only contemporary painter whose canvases Picasso didn't paint over, after buying them. Picasso discovered in Matisse that rarity - a kindred spirit. Lucas and Garbay have found in each other the same."

The Mug by Sarah Lucas and Olivier Garbay is published by Other Criteria/ White Cube (www.othercriteria.com (http://www.othercriteria.com))
Title: Re: Ken in The Times 2009
Post by: Iain Fisher on February 25, 2009, 01:28:49 AM
Nothing by Ken in The Times yesterday.
Title: By George she's got him! Maggi makes Melly with her old friend
Post by: Iain Fisher on March 04, 2009, 11:34:32 AM
Ken in The Times, 3 Mar 2009

The on-line version has a different title from the printed title above “George Always: Maggi makes Melly with her old friend”.  Ken looks at George Always, an exhibition by Maggi Hambling, at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool 31 May 2009   The exhibition is of portraits of jazz musician George Melly.  Ken writes

“…George Melly's mix of energy, camp and rhythm was totally original, funny and very sexy. And here he is as a revolving pot-bellied bundle of dazzling rainbow blue with a black eye patch in a painting by Maggi Hambling.… She paints the action of a wave breaking and the suppleness of her good friend Melly dancing, singing or laughing. “Paint can live, move and breathe in front of us,” she says. “This wave breaks for him.”

(http://www.rainbirdfineart.com/client/db_images/artbank1093_2.jpg)

"Melly kept performing until a week before his death in 2007. Six weeks before he died, his dementia by now advanced, he came to lunch with Hambling. “Dementia suits me,” he confided, “I'm a surrealist.” A short time later he died of cancer.… The Melly paintings are vibrating, speaking to me. Here he's lecturing at a garden party, an interdimensional portal extending from his shoulder. “That's an angel's wing,” Hambling says. “What's this in his eyeball?” I ask. “His long-time love, Squeaky,” she replies. Here he is with a fish in air. “George loved fishing. Fish are always showing up in surrealistic paintings.”

Talking of the artist Maggi Hambling Ken says

“I browse through her London home, where a massive elephant chair, cowskin rugs, flying Indonesian sky dancers, Mexican masks, a mechanical ostrich, a glamorous long-lashed bust of her by the sculptor Andrew Logan, stuffed parrots, her own glorious portraits and a jungle garden straight out of Rousseau provide an ambience not unlike a gorgeous Art Deco salon. “George was very pleased to see I'd finally got a grand piano,” she laughs, pointing to a working toy replica.  Up the stairs under her portrait of Derek Jarman on the stairwell ceiling is her haven, although she spends most of each week at her house on the sea in Suffolk. Fedora at the ready for outside wear, she's wry, sharp as a tack, self-possessed and immeasurably loyal. “I cultivate a tough persona, because I'm very choosy about who I let eat me up.” She displays that loyalty by keeping alive in her paintings those dearest to her - Melly, Jarman and her one-time muse, the decadent beauty Henrietta Moraes, the failed cat burglar. “
Title: GPO films: Postman Pat, Evelyn the twerp and love letters to the mail
Post by: Iain Fisher on March 12, 2009, 02:41:45 PM
Ken in The Times, 10 Mar 2009


Ken looks at We Live in Two Worlds , a DVD boxed set of short films by the legendary GPO Film Unit (the GPO are the British Post Office).

Ken says “The GPO Film Unit had directors such as Len Lye, Harry Watt, Basil Wright, Norman McLaren and Humphrey Jennings, composers such as Brian Easdale and Benjamin Britten, the poet W.H. Auden, the author J.B. Priestley, and producers such as the Brazilian Alberto Cavalcanti.  From 1933, for seven years, the unit produced arty educational films on how the Post Office worked,.. They were mildly amusing, had a certain naive charm and were delivered in a pastiche of animation, mini-drama and mythic poetic gushes.”


The most famous is Night Mail with music by Benjamin Britten and text by WH Auden which reflects the noise of thetrain in the rails “Now the Night Mail is crossing the border/ Bringing the cheques and the postal orders/ Letters for the rich, letters for the poor/ The shop on the corner and the girl next door.”

Ken says “this collaboration between Auden and Britten, makes it romantic that 40 workers scooping millions of letters into nets leave Euston [Railway Station] at 8.30pm daily on the travelling Postal Special. “

Ken describes many of the other films such as The Horsey Mail "set during a storm on the east coast of Norfolk. Seven hundred yards of sea wall have collapsed. There are floods everywhere. So Postman Pat goes to rescue Mrs Stokes, whose bed is surrounded by ducks swimming in 5ft of water. Postman Pat rows her the 15 miles to Horsey High Street to mail a postcard to Farmer Fred. "

“Buy this box set and enter the twilight zone of 22 films from 1936-38. You'll get technical marvels, simple smiles, insights into manpower when it was still elegantly organised and trips across the country with the love letters of a nation. “

You can buy the DVD here:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B001MK9ZHG/savagmessiakenru (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B001MK9ZHG/savagmessiakenru)

(http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51LSONX8zcL._SL500_AA240_.jpg)
Title: For raw emotion look no farther than the kitchen sink
Post by: Iain Fisher on March 17, 2009, 12:43:45 PM
Ken in The Times today, 17 Mar 2009

Ken looks at two films, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, both of which are released on DVD om 23 Marc 2009.

Ken writes:

“Patience is not what these movies peddle. Both written by Alan Sillitoe, Long-Distance Runner (1960) is directed by Tony Richardson and Saturday Night (1962) by Karel Reisz. These two films initiated the British New Wave cinema, followed by Look Back in Anger, Billy Liar, This Sporting Life and A Kind of Loving. Known as “kitchen-sink dramas”, these breakthrough movies of the early 1960s were about the hopes, fears and foul-ups of young working-class fellows entering adulthood in a culture that held no rewards for their unique vitality and emerging vision, but only drudgery and repetition.  Drawing on physical vigour, boredom and an inner life just beginning to find expression, these youngsters struggled to escape gravity and the dearth of opportunities that they saw around them…”

Ken then talks of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning “…Finney plays… a reckless steelworker in industrial Nottingham, fond of ale, women and practical jokes… Finney was hailed as the British Marlon Brando”

On The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner “Tom Courtenay plays Colin Smith, the downcast but likeable petty thief living with his folks on the seedy side of Nottingham… A slim lad with a sometimes pained expression, Courtenay may lack the glaring physical beauty of young Finney, but he makes up for it by being less cocky and more likeable… This may be the better film, with jazz music by John Addison, ironic versions of the hymn Jerusalem, beautiful solitary runs and a parallel action montage in which an inmate is beaten while the assembly sings; but Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (with music by Johnny Dankworth) may have the more compelling character interactions. It's a toss-up. The former is for the rebel, the latter for the rascal in you.”
Title: Re: Ken in The Times 2009
Post by: Iain Fisher on March 25, 2009, 08:47:48 PM
Nothing by Ken this week.
Title: Whores, shadows and the dark heart of Venice- is this the mind of the ripper?
Post by: Iain Fisher on April 01, 2009, 01:26:15 AM
Ken in The Times 31 Mar 2009

Once again the on-line version of the article censors Ken’s title. Rather than “Whores, shadows…” it is called the mundane “Sickert in Venice at the Dulwich Picture Gallery”.

Ken looks at the exhibition of Sickert’s painting in the Dulwich Picture Gallery
www.dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk (http://www.dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk)

Ken’s health is getting poorer, as he is in a wheelchair going round the gallery.

Ken looks at the paintings
 
La Giuseppina Against a Map of Venice: “…a bright spot in the show - a local prostitute, whom he took as a lover, in a colourful pink kimono, vibrant, her hair in preposterous kabuki-like masses”

The Yellow Sleeve “One more spark is the glorious green bed jacket of the prostitute La Chiozzotta”

And an interesting comparison with Bacon “There's a stubborn “Do Not Enter” quality to his paintings. Their aura of exclusion provokes one to persistence. Francis Bacon was smitten with Sickert's bleak renditions of life in the shadows and incorporated his portrait into two of his paintings.”

Sickert is famous as “Some, such as the crime writer Patricia Cornwell, have him down as Jack the Ripper and are calling for a DNA check across the century. What evidence is there? Well, simply from the casual observer's viewpoint, quite a lot. There's no denying that Sickert had a morbid point of view. If not a murderer, then a sufferer of seasonal affective disorder. Surely Venice was never as dull-hued as this. The greens are fungal, the turquoise sky foreboding; he's in love with black”

“…his Camden Town paintings - including the Camden Town Nudes, of naked female bodies on beds with fully dressed men. Riding the tail end of Impressionism, he would become known as the father of British modern art and be hailed in 1930 as the greatest living British painter. Not for him the splashes of exhilaration and optimism that Impressionism can inspire. He saw art as existentialism.”
 
“Detail is meticulous and architecturally rendered, especially in the series of paintings of St Mark's Basilica. Heavy daubs of paint, intermittent spots of gold, the smudging of close-ups and a wash of dour green create a kind of sickly aura.“
Title: Re: Ken in The Times 2009
Post by: BoyScoutKevin on April 19, 2009, 10:19:51 PM
Always good to read one of Ken's articles in "The Times."

Especially when he comments on his film comtemporaries, which he does when he discusses "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner" and "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning," which along with Ken's "Women in Love" are regarded as being three of the best British films ever made in the U.K.

Unfortunate that Ken no longer works for the BBC. Maggi Hamblin would be perfect for one of Ken's artist documentaries, which he did when he did work for the BBC.

That's bad news about Ken being in a wheelchair. I suppose that means no "Moll Flanders," though it is still listed as being in production and for release in 2010.
Title: Join me in Orlando for a live Crucifixion
Post by: Iain Fisher on April 21, 2009, 10:53:19 AM
Ken in The Times, 14 Apr 2009

Ken is in Florida where he received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Florida Film Festival.  He also visits Walt Disney World “spread out in a vast Neverland that combines street theatre, replicas made of putty, costumed characters and architecture from different decades and lands in a kind of past-lives polyglot. With a safari park, an animated cartoon park, World of the Future and Hollywood studio park, there are 23 hotels on site, each themed to suit your craving for Polynesian islands, flashy contemporary, little New Orleans, Davy Crockett-type wilderness, British country manor or Spanish-mossed Creole elegance.”

…

Some of the attractions include United Kingdom Land “Shakespeare has been known to drop in for a drink- his wife Ann Hathaway's rubber cottage is right down the plastic cobblestone street, on the banks of the simulated Avon. My composure is dwindling, and Peter Pan himself can't fly me out of here fast enough now that crowd fatigue has struck.”

“Then it's the E.T. ride, with a filmed appearance by Spielberg himself. We ride a bicycle through tunnels and across the sky with E.T. bundled in our basket. The whole must have been designed by an acid casualty of the 1960s…. Best ride of all is Twister, based on the tornado movie (1996). We thread a labyrinth of abandoned mineshafts into rural Kansas, where the drive-in theatre is playing Psycho and The Shining on a double bill. The moon is high. A deserted petrol station with a rusted red truck at the pumps is a few feet away from where we stand. Suddenly enormous winds whip up, lightning cracks and a tree as tall as two buildings splits in half….Then a cow flies by. The drive-in marquee shatters like Lego, parked cars rise in a vortex of terror. The petrol station catches fire. Oil spills at our feet. Hot flames are scorching my face, but there's no escape with 50 viewers jammed in behind me. “!

Finally Ken goes to Holy Land USA “an Orlando theme park with a biblical theme… What could be more benign than being greeted at the gate by animatronic Joseph and Mary, the little babe raising His arms from the cradle in a repeated hallelujah?

...Jesus Himself invites us to the Last Supper, with foot-long hotdogs and barbecue turkey legs. What a treat!

…In an astounding bit of choreography Jesus is gracefully removed from the cross with great ribbons of satin cloth, carried into the tomb; then a big explosion, puff of smoke and - whoa! - he's suddenly on top of the hillside, in a brand new robe, arms outstretched and whole. Amped-to-the-max, a booming voice fills the air, announcing itself as the messenger of God. We leave to make room for the next Crucifixion crowd."
Title: Re: Ken in The Times 2009
Post by: Iain Fisher on April 21, 2009, 08:53:56 PM
Nothing by Ken in today's Times.
Title: Ken Russell on his film Lisztomania
Post by: Iain Fisher on May 06, 2009, 03:26:32 PM
Ken in The Times 28 April 2009 (sorry for delay, catching up on the backlog)

Ken on Lisztomania which he correctly points out “may be either the biggest puzzler or most overlooked [film]”

Interestingly “It was the first movie to use the new Dolby stereo noise reduction sound system. And it was the only movie to star Ringo Starr as the Pope. In cowboy boots.”  More interesting facts from Ken- I knew Lisztomania wasn't a term invented by Ken, but I didn't know it was coined in the 1840s by the writer Heinrich Heine.  Something else new for me, Liszt was the first person to turn the piano around sideways so that the audience could see him banging the keys.

Ken puts the film in context “…If Lisztomania seems vulgar or grotesque, well, in the context of 1975, as the tidal wave of free love and permission that had embraced the planet the previous ten years crashed to shore and gave us Performance, Barbarella and The Rocky Horror Show, it was perfectly in tune with the times”.  A good intro, but then he describes excerpts from the film, but they will not make Times readers rush out to buy the DVD, for example “Roger Daltrey, a gorgeous rock god from the seminal band The Who, astride a giant pen*s pulled by the women fans he has loved and been loved by”.

On other members of the cast
- “Paul Nicholas playing Wagner as a megalomaniac, vampire and Antichrist, who is out for souls and will eventually capture Hitler’s”
- “Countess Marie d’Agoult, Georges Sand, Lola Montez, Princess Carolyn of Russia, Cosima Wagner, all these women so ravishingly interesting in history playing parts as Beloved Others in a carousel of groupies and wives. “
- "Oliver Reed playing a momentary cameo — he should have had a bigger part. Georgina Hale is gorgeous, Melvyn Murray as Berlioz barely there. My wife Elise was in the film until Equity intervened. My editor Mike Bradsell plays a sycophantic Brahms in a scene immortalised by throwaway lines: 'Piss off, Brahms' and 'I’m not Johann, I’m Levi Strauss'."

And Ken on the joys of watching Ken films “… there are moments as I watch the film when I get a giddy, dizzy feeling that I am watching “live” as Ken Russell, the promising director, vehemently and gleefully throws his heretofore victorious movie career away. Yah! Hurrah! Life is good! Yes indeedy! “

Ken moves to composers generally “…I like geniuses. I particularly like musical geniuses. Which is why I collected more than 2,000 classical LPs (before they melted in a fire)… [composers] saved my life. I was in near-vegetable state, lost to nervous breakdown after the merchant navy for which I was so patently unfit, when the strains of Tchaikovsky coming over the radio dramatically changed my vibratory state, my rhythm, my soul, my being. I was alive again, I had purpose…”

“…I seem to have a synaesthetic connection between music and vision- music makes pictures for me. I am often told by my wife that I have “bat ears”, every whisper and click is resoundingly loud for me at any distance.  Loving music so much, do I play it? Not a bit. I tried the piano. No talent.”

Ken finished with a quote from Liszt “The public is always good. And truth is a great flirt.”
Title: Alternative Miss World 2009: a sea of wigs, spangles and megafrocks
Post by: Iain Fisher on May 07, 2009, 03:21:58 PM
Ken in The Times, 5 May 2009

Ken is a judge of the Alternative Miss World 2009 at The Roundhouse in London.  The theme, ideal for Ken, is “the elements” — earth, air, fire, water and the void.

Ken says “There is something incredibly sane about walking up Hampstead Hill in a long black ceremonial robe with gold glitter in broad daylight. A smattering of spontaneous applause erupts from casual sidewalk café-dwellers; a girl stops her car mid-traffic to get out and embrace me and my wife Elise (in fire-engine red silk dragon-fabric) for our sartorial overkill.”

“…Modelled on the Crufts dog show, it judges the contestants on poise, personality and originality.. the contest has achieved legendary status and full-to-bursting attendance as a celebration of art, fashion, music and performance… One year a man wore another man as a hat.”
Fellow judges include the sculptor Bruce Lacey (subject of Ken’s 1962 TV film Preservation Man)  and one of the hosts is Ruby Wax.

“Contestants have names such as Miss Flotsam, Miss I Killed the Mary Celeste, Miss No Signs of Any Civilisation Whatsoever, Miss Dementia Praecox and Will Be Miss(ed) . . .”

“…Miss Hokusai enters as a patient on an operating table — very T. S. Eliot. I’m beginning to feel anesthetised myself. When does more become too much? After four hours, the bouncing yarn dreadlocks and spectacular bobbing pseudopods begin to blur. I’m already leaning visibly in the direction of the gyrating Miss Sahara and her Amazonian curves — until she gives mock-birth on stage to the dark continent.”
 
“...But just when you think you’ll overdose on one more silver robot, the moment for which we dared not hope erupts: an also-ran emerges and blows away the competition in a surprise tour de force. Petite Miss Fancy Chance, a 4ft10in young Korean lady, is propelled on to the stage at the apex of a 20ft dress whose skirts are as delicate, round and magnificent as a planet. The layers of her petticoats fall away to reveal a cage in which a cyclist pumps away at clockwork gears. A wire descends to lift Miss Chance by her braid alone to the vaulted ceiling, where she performs graceful arabesques in mid-air. Ahhhh. We’re in love. “
Title: Re: Ken in The Times 2009
Post by: Iain Fisher on May 13, 2009, 10:36:34 AM
Nothing by Ken this week.
Title: Re: Ken in The Times 2009
Post by: Iain Fisher on May 19, 2009, 09:29:33 PM
Nothing by Ken today.
Title: Hope and beauty from Colombia’s children
Post by: Iain Fisher on June 16, 2009, 11:05:30 AM
Ken in The Times 2 Jun 2009

Ken writes about a photography exhibition in London.  It is the first European show by the Colombian photography collective Click por los barrios (“Click for the neighbourhoods”).

Ken says “I haven’t been this excited by a group of photographs since my own fledgeling professional output in the 1950s of photographic social essays of Portobello street scenes and Teddy girls.”
The exhibition, called A Trace of My Existence is at Chats Palace Arts Centre, Hackney, London E9 (chatspalace.com).  There are 16 black-and-white photographs by children aged 5 to 26 from Colombia, all of whom have been trained and sponsored by Click por los barrios."

Ken says “With the help of the show’s curator, Peter Young, of the Chats Palace photography department, the London photographer Zoë Petersen spent two years making it possible for the exhibit to come here. I asked her about the children of Medellín whom she observed when visiting the Colombian photo classes. “One little boy who used to busk on buses on a Saturday swapped his work day to Sunday so he could take part in the Saturday workshops with Click,” she says.”

Ken continues “The photographs in the exhibit show unexpected facility. Fresh eyes look at moments of confidence, abandon, clarity and playfulness. The subjects are full of charm, humour, pathos and a kind of triumphant dignity. Free of dogma or clichés, the pictures express the simplicity of childhood, the delights of friendship, the mysteries of environment, the possibilities for normal exuberance in a culture of displacement. One little girl tips upside-down in a handstand. A boy’s sober face confronts us like a luminous panther in a jungle of ferns. A sturdy young fellow poses with a shovel. A child sprawls on the ground beneath a clothesline of just-washed trousers. The angles, the light, are happy accidents or well chosen.”
Title: Me and Warhol: souvenirs from Andyland
Post by: Iain Fisher on June 16, 2009, 11:15:42 AM
Ken in The Times today 16 Jun 2009

Ken on Andy Warhol and a new Andy Warhol: Treasures, by Matt Wrbican and Geralyn Huxley. “A beautiful, golden-painted, padded hardback as comfy to the touch as a pillow, with Warhol’s iconic portrait of Marilyn Monroe on the cover, this book is a steal at £30. You can feel his ghost hovering over this successful enterprise. “

Ken says “…The unique selling point of this clever book is the 21 carefully reproduced knick-knacks and mementoes that are secreted throughout in pockets and envelopes, like a handcrafted treasure map of teasingly significant and mundane clues to his almost-too-fascinating life. The receipt for the last cab ride he took to the hospital. His childhood report card on which the teacher ticks him into the “pleasant” category but stops short of calling him “appealing”. His stencils for the Campbell’s soup logo, his hand-painted paper doll outfits. An early fan postcard to Truman Capote. A get-well card from Edie Sedgwick, sent from the mental institution, to his hospital bed after he was shot by Valerie Solanas. The first interview of the transvestite star Candy Darling . . . and more.
With all the removable bits and pieces spread around my chair, I’m happily in Andyland.”

Ken talks of his meeting with Warhol “…Summoned to his studio, the Factory, to be interviewed for an article that he planned to write, I became one of his thousands of filmed and videotaped experiments in black and white. Warhol had his right-hand man, Paul Morrissey, do the filming of me. I was invited to prattle on about anything that came to mind: I chose my days in the Merchant Navy to extemporise about. Morrissey had an “aha!” moment: “Yes! We’ll call this ‘Ken Russell steams into NYC’.”

Ken finshes “He was a much better artist than he gave himself credit for, and that’s what this fun book with its even-handed, unsensationalised text illustrates.”
Title: Re: Ken in The Times 2009
Post by: Iain Fisher on June 23, 2009, 06:23:59 PM
Nothing by Ken today.
Title: Ken's gay films
Post by: Iain Fisher on June 30, 2009, 11:22:12 AM
"Gay films let me express solidarity with the outsider".  Ken in The Times 24 Jun 2009

Ken talks about the Pout Film Festival of queer cinema at the ICA and Curzon Soho cinemas during London Pride Week to 6 Jul 2009.  Ken talks of watching gay films with his favourite gay T-shirt “If time and space are curved, where do all the straight people come from?”  The festival includes classic and recent gay films and documentaries including Before Stonewall, The Celluloid Closet, The Killing of Sister George and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

But Ken has drawn up his own “mini DVD festival”

To Die For (or Heaven’s a Drag): "utter trash, but a British cult classic"

Longtime Companion: "moving, powerful and as good as film-making gets... puts a discerning and human face on the Aids tragedy".

Chuck and Buck: "this tale of the divergent life paths of boyhood friends is full of surprises... holds the attention with fantastic performances and writing".

Almost Normal: "gay professor gets transported back in time to his youthful high-school self, except that it’s an alternate reality where everyone is gay... The plot twists keep coming".

After Stonewall:  “an eloquent documentary, the sequel to Before Stonewall…”

Gone But Not Forgotten: “too slow, but intriguing”  A man with amnesia develops a relationship with another man, but then the wife turns up.

The Lost Language of Cranes: “moving, flawless, painful portrait of a marriage in breakdown and a son’s coming out. Exquisite writing”.  The director is John Schlesinger.

Flawless: “an inspiring, well-acted tragicomic tale about a homophobic ex-cop forced by a stroke to accept therapeutic singing lessons from his outrageous drag-queen neighbour”.  With Robert DeNiro and Philip Seymour Hoffman.

But Ken says, his favourite “gay-friendly” films are…The Music Lovers, Women in Love and The Rainbow.

Title: Now I’ve turned 82, it’s time to take stock of all my muses
Post by: Iain Fisher on July 08, 2009, 03:07:55 PM
Ken in The Times, 7 Jul 2009

Ken is 82 and is using his birthday “to take stock” and look at things in his earl;y days that made an impression on him:  Some memories are part of his usual repertoire of interview anecdotes- as a child showing German expressionist movies during the war, his infatuation with Dorothy Lamour on the screen.  But there is other interesting stuff:

Through the Looking Glass puddles: Ken talks of rain filling the gutters, then seeing the sky reflected in the puddles. “Later I was to use the reflection of an actor playing Prokofiev in a murky pond to push the boundaries of Huw Wheldon’s dictum that in BBC Monitor biopics, no actor be used to portray a non-fictional artist.”

Toy soldiers: The boy Ken playing with lead soldiers painted in bright enamels “A director’s dream, organising precision battles where the brave and invincible come out on top and no one is killed, no animal harmed.”

My first documentary: “At 9 I created my first documentary, using a silent newsreel, called Camel: Ship of the Desert. I saved my pennies to record my commentary in a novelty booth at the Lee-on-the-Solent pier.”  Ken discovers the recording was faulty, high-pitched and squeaky.  “As a director I pay close attention to the pitch and music of the characters’ voices.”

Skiddaw: “Scouting locations in the Lake District for a biopic on the poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti... and his Pre-Raphaelite friends, I awoke the first morning to witness a vision across Derwentwater. Before me was Skiddaw, a god of a mountain when Olympus was still a baby, looking like a great pterodactyl with a wingspan of seven miles. Legend has it Skiddaw sleeps under stone, but will awake when needed, to wrench himself from Earth and soar, transfiguring all who fall beneath his flying shadow. In the spell of this leviathan I made Song of Summer, Tommy, Clouds of Glory, Dance of the Seven Veils, The Rainbow, The Devils and Mahler.”

The partner: “Elise was a student when she took a job at the town cinema to see my movies free… selling tickets…  We spent a few sunshine minutes in her Chelsea apartment one morning. She kept my photo on her desk for 20 years before concluding that I’d never call and throwing it away. Five years after that I phoned. She joined me in the New Forest ten years ago and that, my friends, is art.”
Title: Re: Ken in The Times 2009
Post by: Iain Fisher on July 14, 2009, 08:38:32 PM
This continues in a new thread.
Title: Re: Ken's gay films
Post by: BoyScoutKevin on July 16, 2009, 11:12:19 PM
Quote from: Iain Fisher on June 30, 2009, 11:22:12 AM
"Gay films let me express solidarity with the outsider".  Ken in The Times 24 Jun 2009

Ken talks about the Pout Film Festival of queer cinema at the ICA and Curzon Soho cinemas during London Pride Week to 6 Jul 2009.  Ken talks of watching gay films with his favourite gay T-shirt “If time and space are curved, where do all the straight people come from?”  The festival includes classic and recent gay films and documentaries including Before Stonewall, The Celluloid Closet, The Killing of Sister George and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

But Ken has drawn up his own “mini DVD festival”

To Die For (or Heaven’s a Drag): "utter trash, but a British cult classic"

Longtime Companion: "moving, powerful and as good as film-making gets... puts a discerning and human face on the Aids tragedy".

Chuck and Buck: "this tale of the divergent life paths of boyhood friends is full of surprises... holds the attention with fantastic performances and writing".

Almost Normal: "gay professor gets transported back in time to his youthful high-school self, except that it’s an alternate reality where everyone is gay... The plot twists keep coming".

After Stonewall:  “an eloquent documentary, the sequel to Before Stonewall…”

Gone But Not Forgotten: “too slow, but intriguing”  A man with amnesia develops a relationship with another man, but then the wife turns up.

The Lost Language of Cranes: “moving, flawless, painful portrait of a marriage in breakdown and a son’s coming out. Exquisite writing”.  The director is John Schlesinger.

Flawless: “an inspiring, well-acted tragicomic tale about a homophobic ex-cop forced by a stroke to accept therapeutic singing lessons from his outrageous drag-queen neighbour”.  With Robert DeNiro and Philip Seymour Hoffman.

But Ken says, his favourite “gay-friendly” films are…The Music Lovers, Women in Love and The Rainbow.



Actually, while I myself am not gay, that is one of the things that attracted me to Ken's films. His willingness to do films with a gay theme. Actually, I think he's done more gay themed films than most gay directors.

And while I don't have the complete article in front of me, I'd like to correct something I remember him saying. Sort of him saying that Sharon Stone's character in "Basic Instinct" was a lesbian. The character may have had some lesbian moments in the film, but the character was not a lesbian. The character was bisexual. Which Ken ought to know, having so many bisexual--both male and female--characters in his own films.

And I'd like to say, why is the film festival not showing any of Ken's films, such as "The Music Lovers?"