Films that have never been shown
Carl MULLER
The Fall of Phaeton |
The Quiet American |
The Queen of the Night at
the British Museum |
D-Tox |
Graham Greene’s classic, The Quiet American was filmed back in 2000,
starring Michael Caine and Brandan Fraser. The film was well-received at
the Toronto Film Festival but it was axed after September 11, being
considered too controversial for release.
Numerous films featuring some of the biggest stars are now gathering
dust in Hollywood’s closet. They cannot be released because it is
thought they are ‘bad’ or ‘unmarketable.’ Also, many Hollywood
executives hold back films when they may be termed ‘offensive’ although
so many pirated copies come in, even to Sri Lanka.
In 1999, D-Tox an action-packed thriller starring Sylvester Stallone
was filmed. It cost Universal Pictures 60 million pounds and has been
lingering up to date with no prospect of it ever being shown.
There is a World War II drama that featured the child star Haley Joel
Osment, who played the role of a Jewish boy who disguised himself as a
Gentile during the Nazi invasion of Poland. It is still awaiting
release.
‘Phone Booth’ was a film of a deranged sniper who traps and kills his
victims in a Manhattan phone booth. That has been indefinitely delayed.
At least there was an explained. America already has its plate full of
snipers. Who wants more and especially when so many use phone booths to
call friends when they are out of doors?
The problem is that the cost of producing new films has risen so
sharply that studios are now cutting their losses by keeping that they
think won’t market in the closet.
PS - Why not pack them all off to India, that seems to thrive on
anything and everything in the theatres?
At the British Museum: Goddess or whore?
Don’t pass by the British Museum and miss seeing a new terracotta
relief that the Museum spent 1.5 million pounds for. It is a
Mesopotamian antique, The Queen of the Night identified by the Japanese
art-lover who sold it, as being from the reign of the Babylonian King
Hammurabi. It could be a representation of a naked goddess or a sign for
a Babylonian brothel.
Even the Museum will tell you it knows little about it except that it
was well worth the money and ‘exceptionally sexy.’
Rubens, who broke European rules of art
To look at any work by Rubens is a revelation. He was the courtier
who knew how to satisfy and delight his patrons - Charles I of Britain
and Philip IV of Spain among others.
Rubens had his beginnings in Italy in the early 1600s after an
initial training in Antwerp. But he was also independent enough to be a
daring and tireless innovator. He broke all the rules of European Art
and injected his work with a startling vitality that gave an immense
freshness as well as a sense of attack.
He became known, even adored, for his religious commissions - work
for royal and aristocratic patrons - as well as for a special room where
he hung his drawings and tapestries. Wherever his work hung, dynamism
seemed to leap off the walls. In Italy, he executed, The Fall of Phaeton
when he was just 28 years-old and even at so young an age, his paintings
had an arresting vivacity and an almost theatrical flamboyancy.
This same theatricality gleamed through his huge altarpieces of
‘Christ’s Descent from the Cross’ where the dead Christ, ghastly in
pallor, spreads across the whole width of the canvas.
Rubens was a masterly Baroque stylist - a style never designed for
subtlety - and all his works an unrestrained and heartfelt celebration
of humanity with a delicacy that was beguiling.
Stirring up racist hatred
The Zulu playwright, Mbangeni Ngema, has stirred up a lot of racist
hatred in South Africa by releasing a song calling on the blacks to
fight the Indian minority community:
My fellow countrymen!
We need men to take on the Indians.
They arrive in Durban everyday
And are packed at the airport....
The song is titled ‘AmaNdiya’ - meaning Indiana.
There are 500,000 South Africans of Indian descent in the country.
Even Mandela demanded that Ngema apologise, but it seems to obvious that
people are never satisfied anywhere until they have caused trouble.
I said ‘anywhere’. Isn’t that our country too?
Remembering Balthus
Balthus, born Balthasar Klossowski in 1908, died aged 92 in 2001. He
was one of the 20th century’s most controversial artists, both
mischievous and manipulative and horrified the establishment with his
series of paintings of adolescent girls in suggestive poses.
In America he was accused of encouraging child abuse and when a wine
company used one of his paintings as a label, the company was forced to
withdraw the wine from the US market.
Balthus cultivated the image of a recluse and when once asked to give
his biographical information for a 1968 exhibition, he wrote ‘Balthus is
a painter about whom nothing is known. Now look at my pictures.’
He grew up in Paris and an album of his first drawings was published
by his mother’s lover when he was just 12. The lover, German poet Rainer
Maria Rilke, advised him to use the nickname ‘Balthus.’
In 1933, Balthus provided the illustrations for an edition of
‘Wuthering Heights’ and his images of Heathcliff and Cathy were met with
some disgust. He then sealed his reputation with the painting La Lecan
de Guitare’ which depicted a Lesbian seduction. He admitted that he had
deliberately set out to shock.
‘Balthus is a giant,’ wrote one critic, ‘but to most people he’s the
fellow who paints little girls showing their panties.” Balthus remained
indifferent. ‘Everybody sees what he wants to see,’ he said.
He was hugely admired by some of his contemporaries. Even Picasso
described him as a ‘real painter who is doing so much more than all
these young artists who do nothing but copy me.’
Balthus’ paintings sold for millions of dollars and on his 92nd
birthday, there was quite a surreal mix of celebrities including Tony
Curtis, Bono and David Bowie.
Tate gallery call it a work of art!
It is in a tin - one tin - of Italian artist, Piero Manzoni’s faeces
and it was bought by the Tate Gallery for 22,300 pounds! One tin of
shit!
Manzoni made an ‘Edition’ of 90 tins, selling each 30-gram tin for
the same price as gold. His motive for canning his excrement was to
expose the gullibility of the art-buying public. He said: ‘If collectors
really want something intimate and truly personal to the artist, there’s
the artist’s own shit.’
At least 45 of the 90 cans have exploded, but Manzoni has sent his
shit to museums across the world, aware of the fact that the tins were
malodorous time-bombs that would burst some day and spatter the museums.
The Tate Gallery who paid so much, say that so far their tin has
remained intact, but they are keeping an eye on any signs of faecal
upheaval!
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