Happy days are here again......!

artwork by Mary Royt

I'm back where I belong, slaving away at the computer. HA!

I never thought I'd miss the damn thing so much. It's kind of frightening really, just how much I've come to depend on this thing. How much I take it for granted.

Here's what happened: the old computer (five years old more or less) blew a fuse. First it began making a loud noise like the 'rushing' of the ocean - I kid you not. Then when I shut it down to reboot it refused to cooperate. My daughter deduced that the thing had given up its ghost. Fried to a crisp. 'Dust and dog hair,' she said. (I wouldn't be surprised.)

And since I don't back anything up, all my files were gone - zip. Disappeared into the ether.

But wait, my wonderful daughter knows someone who can retrieve the hard drive from the broken down old carcass, so all is not lost. In a few weeks I should have all my stuff back - hopefully.

So here we are, a few days later and I'm breaking in a new computer - thanks once again to my daughter. Totally different screen and totally different (in size) keyboard. That's the hard part, accommodating my hands to the different spaces.  Plus it's still feeling strange looking at the different screen and all. But I'll soon grow accustomed to its face.

So while I'm breaking in my new electronic companion, bear with me. I'm taking it slow and easy and making sure I don't alienate it before we become best buds.

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I'm here but not really here!

Just a quick note to let everyone know I'm taking a short break due to some computer issues that need to be attended to ... but I'll be back!

In the meantime, enjoy a picture of my handsome Rocky to brighten your day! See you soon.

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Saturday Salon on Sunday: Joaquin Sorolla (1863 - 1923)

Maria at La Gran

Return From Fishing 1894

Gray Day on Valencia Beach

On the Beach at Valencia

Waiting for Fishing

Pescadoras

On San Sebastian Beach

The Horse's Bath

Children on the Beach

Sea Idyll

Promenade on the Beach

En La Yola

The Pink Robe

Summer

Raquel Meller

After Bathing

Joaquin Sorolla (1863 - 1923) was a gifted and prolific Spanish painter born in Valencia. He studied art education locally and then under a series of influential teachers. At eighteen he traveled to Madrid to study the master paintings at the Museo del Prado. Later, after military service, Sorolla obtained a grant to study painting in Rome at the Spanish Academy. 

A stay in Paris in 1885 exposed him to the influence of artists and paintings of the modern age. Sorolla continued study in Rome, then returned to Valencia where he married and began to raise a family - all the while painting huge canvases of Orientalist, mythological, historical and social themes. 

After many initial successes and recognition in his own country, an exhibit at the Paris Universal Exposition of 1900 won him a medal of honor and nomination as Knight of the Legion of Honor. Many other awards and honors followed.

He also traveled to America where he spent several months painting portraits and earning more success. J. Paul Getty purchased ten of Sorolla's beach scenes, some of which are in the Getty Museum.

For an artist this successful in his lifetime, it's amazing to me that I wasn't at all familiar with his work until very recently.

His canvases are on exhibition in many of the world's top museums and in 2007, Sorolla's work was exhibited alongside that of John Singer Sargent, another artist (much better known) of that age who created his own niche and recognizable style. Just this year, a few of Sorolla's paintings were on exhibit at the Queen Sofia Spanish Institute in New York.

"By reason of his native genius and stubborn will-power he became what he is - the painter of vibrating sunshine without equal. Let there be no mincing of comparisons in this assertion. Not Turner, not Monet, painted so directly blinding shafts of sunlight as has this Spaniard." 

(James Gibbons Huneker, quoted in Peel, Edmund: The Painter Joaquin Sorolla, Philip Wilson Publishers, Ltd. 1989)

Joaquin Sorolla y Batisda - Photo: Gertrude Kasebier

To view more of Sorolla's work, please use this link and/or this one.

Disclaimer: I've culled the items in this post from various online sites. I make no claim on copyright nor do I intend making any profit from the showing of these paintings.

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Foreign Film Poster Thursday

The smart Danish poster for DARK PASSAGE starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. 

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Forgotten (or Overlooked) Film Tuesday: DARK PASSAGE(1947) starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall

It's Forgotten (or Overlooked) Film Tuesday once again, a weekly meme hosted by Todd Mason at his blog, Sweet Freedom. Don't forget to check in and check out the links.

DARK PASSAGE (1947), directed by Delmer Daves and based on a novel by David Goodis, is a Humphrey Bogart film seldom shown anywhere. It's my favorite pairing of Bogart and Bacall. (Their third film together) There was less posing by Bacall and the love story worked for me. I'm not a 'put your lips together and blow' fan. (I know I'm in the minority but it made me uneasy that Bacall was so damn young in those movies.)

The improbable plot:

Vincent Parry (Humphrey Bogart) is an innocent man convicted of murdering his wife. He escapes from prison and gains the sympathy of artist Irene Jansen (Lauren Bacall).

Where would thrillers be without a beautiful woman to pick up the pieces and help the hero hide out?

She conveniently knows one of the persons involved in Bogart's conviction, the viperish Madge (Agnes Moorehead), a woman once spurned by Parry. It's hard to imagine the two of them together (Bogart and Moorehead) under any circumstances, but hey, this is the movies and the script says he did spurn her.

The first third of the film is shot (as was THE LADY IN THE LAKE with Robert Montgomery, coincidentally in the same year) mostly (though not entirely) from Vincent Parry's point of view - through his eyes. His face is never seen.

Parry meets a friendly cab driver named Sam who recognizes him as the escaped convict, but decides to help. Conveniently, Sam knows of a plastic surgeon who won't ask too many questions.

Houseley Stevenson and Tom D'Andrea (Doctor and Cabby)

Once Parry gets the surgery, he arranges to recuperate at his friend George's apartment. Bogart spends part of the film wrapped in bandages - an atmospheric touch.

No matter what, a man's gotta' have his smokes.

Unfortunately, when George is murdered, Parry is once again suspected of the dirty deed - his fingerprints are found on the murder weapon (a trumpet ?!).

The man cannot catch a break. But at least he has a beautiful, sultry woman to look after him.

Lots of smoking going on this film. In more ways than one.

Another couple of deaths follow before Vincent Parry (correctly) decides he is not going to be able to prove he  didn't kill anyone. (You think?) I mean, the grim shadow of death follows this guy wherever he goes.

But not to worry.

I especially like the pragmatic yet romantic ending of the film in which Parry and Irene meet up in South America.  Where else is a guy on the lam gonna' go?

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What I Watched Last Night

No, it wasn't the Olympics Closing Ceremonies (I no longer have cable so the NBC online watch was not available to me). Though I'm sure at some point youtube will come to the rescue. And best of all, I won't have to listen to the inane chatter of the commentators.

What I watched last night was the AMC series, THE KILLING, a gritty detective show set in the gray, rain-washed lower middle class neighborhoods of Seattle. A gorgeous city with fantastic views of the water, but here we're treated to scenes of soggy, grungy, teenagers with strange metal parts protruding from lips, ears and noses. Dead end kids messing about with skate-boards and drugs and you name it -  an eerie and unpleasant sub-culture with its own bizarre rules.

Based on a Danish show, this is the grim story of a young girl's murder and its widening repercussions.  Three story threads combine to make a whole: the murder and the cops who will hunt for the killer, the girl's grief-stricken family and a mayoral political campaign, whose dynamic candidate (Billy Campbell) has been keeping secrets. (And you know where that leads.)

The show is a bit slow going at first, but as suspects are grilled and discarded and the evidence begins to form a picture, I was hooked. An added plus: the acting by everyone involved is sensational, as is the casting.

The lead detective, Sarah Linden (played wonderfully by an actress I'm not familiar with, Mireille Enos) is on her last day of duty - she's leaving the Seattle Police Force, heading down south to California to get married. Sarah is a woman under personal pressure, she is uprooting her sullen young son (who isn't happy about it at all) and opting for a major life-change. Her bags are packed, her office cleared. In fact, her replacement, Stephen Holder (another terrific actor, Joel Kinnaman) has just shown up with a box full of his belongings. Don't let the door hit you on the way out, Sarah.

Mireille Enos as Sarah Linden.

Except that her boss hasn't signed the discharge papers yet and he wants her to look at one final case and show Holder the ropes - he's a transfer from Narcotics. Officially she has until the end of the day and then she can catch her plane and go join her fiancee.

But once Sarah finds the body of Rosie Larsen, a missing teenager, the plot thickens. Her plane reservations keep getting cancelled and re-scheduled and cancelled and re-scheduled. Sarah has doubts about Holder's ability to deal with fall-out. He has rather a 'bull in a china shop' air about him and seems to lack the sensibility to deal with the girl's parents (Michelle Forbes and Brent Sexton) who are dazed with grief.

Joel Kinnaman as Stephen Holder

As usual in these cases, the murdered girl had secrets. (Hey, what seventeen year old doesn't? But in general, not these sorts of secrets.) And As it turns out, the father, Stan Larsen, has his own dark history to deal with. (There's nothing like a murder case for shining a light on every one's peccadilloes.) Though he is almost immediately dismissed as a suspect, Stan's impatience with the cops' seeming inability to catch his daughter's killer only makes a bad situation worse.

There is a lot going on here and some of the time you lose track of the main issue which is: the murder of a seventeen year old girl. Cutting through all the bulls**t is one dogged cop and her slightly resentful side-kick who isn't happy being relegated to secondary status. (And by the way, did you know you could say bulls**t on TV now? I didn't. But it's okay, better than the F word.)

Then, as the case seems about to be wrapped up, it falls apart. Tangling matters, the Feds show up at a potential crime scene and grab all the evidence. Things just get muddier as the rain continues to fall and leaks in the Mayoral campaign as well as down at the cop shop add to the murk of the situation. Just what the heck is going on here?

As Sarah's long lost ex-husband shows up out of the blue to add to the building pressures, she is drawn ever deeper, day by day, into a murder case filled with false leads and an ever-widening list of suspects. And just when I'm thinking the wedding date had better be postponed, the case is apparently wrapped. The police have their man and Sarah and her son board a plane for California.

Except that.....Well, you'll have to watch to see the smasheroo of an ending.

Okay,  I admit fast-forwarding a bit through some of the family histrionics as well as the political machinations. (Those scenes could have been trimmed a bit.) But other than that this is one hell of a murder mystery. I guarantee you will not see the end coming.

Netflix has episodes of the first season and they kept me up until 3:30 in the morning -  in a grand orgy of mystery-watching - something I rarely do anymore. All told, there are 26 episodes (but only about half that are currently available) far as I know, can't wait to see what happens next.

View THE KILLING trailer here.

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Saturday Salon: Tamara de Lempicka

Tadeusz Lempicki, the artist's 'society gadabout' husband.

Tamara de Lempicka (1898 - 1980) was born in Warsaw, Poland. In 1912, she went to live in St. Petersburg with her grandmother when her parents divorced. At the age of fifteen, while at the opera, she spotted the man she would eventually marry - obviously a girl who knew her own mind.

The man of her dreams was Tadeusz Lempicka a well-known ladies man about town and erstwhile lawyer with an experienced eye on Tamara's dowry. (In the movies he would probably have been played by Mischa Auer.)

In 1917, during the Russian Revolution Tadeusz was arrested in the dead of night by the Bolsheviks. Maria searched the prisons for him and after several weeks, with the help of the Swedish consul, she secured his release. They traveled to Copenhagen, Denmark then London, England and finally to Paris France to where Maria's family had also escaped, along with numerous upper-class Russian refugees. - Wikipedia

In Paris, they lived on the sale of assorted family jewels while Tadeusz was unwilling or unable to find work. (Isn't that always the way with these society n'er do wells? Look at his portrait.)

Tamara's bold and glamorous art deco style developed quickly (probably through economic necessity) after she'd given birth to her daughter Kizette. Influenced by cubism and the artists of the day, in 1925 she had her first major exhibition having painted 28 works in six months.

The painter became a society sensation, earning huge fees for portraits of the rich and famous. To read more about Tamara de Lempicka's tumultuous life and times, please use this link.

Tamara de Limpicka touching up her husband's portrait.

Disclaimer: All the artwork and/or photos used in this post were culled from various sources on the internet purely for educational and aesthetic purposes. I own no copyright on the works nor do I claim to.

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