Title: The Best of Chet Baker Sings: Let's Get Lost
Media: audio CD
I go to this CD again and again as one of my top 10 favorite vocal performances. Chet Baker's vocals are in the same category as Billie Holiday's. Neither Chet nor Billie are going to knock you out with pure talent like Sinatra or Sarah Vaughn, but they possess a haunting quality that enters your gut, your emotional center, your imagination. I want to describe Baker's vocals and trumpet playing as ghostly and sensual, if something can be both immaterial and caressing simultaneously.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Monday, August 27, 2007
Alias Mr. Alden
Title: Alias Mr. Alden from The Whistler
Media: CD
I am certain this half hour radio show from 1952 is as good or better than any half hour of television on today. This show could easily be padded and turned into a fine film noir. It is a classic double - double cross with a femme fatal to boot. Both characters are after the safety deposit key of the recently murdered Mr. Alden and neither can be trusted. In the end the woman ends up with the money and kills the man pretending to be Mr. Alden. Finally, in classic Whistler style, a seemingly insignificant act, in this case the man typing the woman's name on a check on a new ribbon, becomes the guilty party's undoing. In this case her name typed on that new ribbon was plain for the policew to see. "I'm sure something in this room will tell us why your name was typed by the murdered Mr. Alden!" (Key whistle, thank you Signal Oil.)
Media: CD
I am certain this half hour radio show from 1952 is as good or better than any half hour of television on today. This show could easily be padded and turned into a fine film noir. It is a classic double - double cross with a femme fatal to boot. Both characters are after the safety deposit key of the recently murdered Mr. Alden and neither can be trusted. In the end the woman ends up with the money and kills the man pretending to be Mr. Alden. Finally, in classic Whistler style, a seemingly insignificant act, in this case the man typing the woman's name on a check on a new ribbon, becomes the guilty party's undoing. In this case her name typed on that new ribbon was plain for the policew to see. "I'm sure something in this room will tell us why your name was typed by the murdered Mr. Alden!" (Key whistle, thank you Signal Oil.)
Friday, August 24, 2007
Belle De Jour
Media: Film
Title: Belle De Jour (1967)
Director: Luis Bunuel
Belle De Jour is the second masterpiece of French cinema I have seen this year. (Rules of the Game being the other.) Looking as beautiful as any one you have ever seen on film, Catherine Deneuve plays Severine, an emotionless, young, upper class wife suffering through the most intense case of ennui. In a way she is similar to Dustin Hoffman’s character in The Graduate (also 1967). She seemingly has everything (wealth, beautiful doctor husband, ski vacations) and her whole life before her, but she is paralyzed with a feeling of emptiness; and like Hoffman’s Benjamin, she turns to illicit sex to feel something, anything in her barren life. This movie also contains one of the greatest screen thugs in all film. The thug is Severine inversed. He too is young, disillusioned and disconnected from society. But where Severine is inert the thug is perpetually on the knife’s edge of violence. Despite being different in every societal aspect they share at their core a feeling of estrangement from the world, and this draws them to each other.
Belle De Jour deserves multiple viewings and much conversation to fully explore all the themes and ideas saturating this work of art.
Title: Belle De Jour (1967)
Director: Luis Bunuel
Belle De Jour is the second masterpiece of French cinema I have seen this year. (Rules of the Game being the other.) Looking as beautiful as any one you have ever seen on film, Catherine Deneuve plays Severine, an emotionless, young, upper class wife suffering through the most intense case of ennui. In a way she is similar to Dustin Hoffman’s character in The Graduate (also 1967). She seemingly has everything (wealth, beautiful doctor husband, ski vacations) and her whole life before her, but she is paralyzed with a feeling of emptiness; and like Hoffman’s Benjamin, she turns to illicit sex to feel something, anything in her barren life. This movie also contains one of the greatest screen thugs in all film. The thug is Severine inversed. He too is young, disillusioned and disconnected from society. But where Severine is inert the thug is perpetually on the knife’s edge of violence. Despite being different in every societal aspect they share at their core a feeling of estrangement from the world, and this draws them to each other.
Belle De Jour deserves multiple viewings and much conversation to fully explore all the themes and ideas saturating this work of art.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Chet Baker
(Now that I'm getting back into the work routine, let's see if I can get back into the blog routine.)
Media: CD
Title: Chet Baker: Complete 1952 Fantasy and Pacific Jazz Sessions
Tonight I listened to Chet Baker and Gerry Mulligan playing on "The Complete 1952 Fantasy and Pacific Jazz Sessions". Loved it, especially 'Lullaby of the Leaves' and 'My Funny Valentine'. Close your eyes and listen to the sections where Baker and Mulligan play together, Mulligan low and out front and Baker with his high ghost-whisper playing behind him. Just beautiful.
Media: CD
Title: Chet Baker: Complete 1952 Fantasy and Pacific Jazz Sessions
Tonight I listened to Chet Baker and Gerry Mulligan playing on "The Complete 1952 Fantasy and Pacific Jazz Sessions". Loved it, especially 'Lullaby of the Leaves' and 'My Funny Valentine'. Close your eyes and listen to the sections where Baker and Mulligan play together, Mulligan low and out front and Baker with his high ghost-whisper playing behind him. Just beautiful.
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