Following the disclosure by Zelenskyy that Russia is providing satellite telemetry to the Iranians to target US bases in the Middle East, Trump announces that he will confront Putin directly—something we thought had been verified or at least suspect from the start of the war. Responding to criticisms regarding under-reporting of American casualties and the extent of damage done to installations in Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar, the Pentagon revises upwards its official figures. Duelling blockades in the Strait of Hormuz continue with ships being turned back from the Persian gulf and Iranian ports. Calling for the release of political prisoners, the US state department strongly condemns continued executions of protesters. As bombing and demolition continue in southern Lebanon, Trump and Netanyahu are scheduled to meet to discuss extracting themselves from the war in Iran—neither having the appetite for prolonged negotiations.
Going into general release on this day in 1955 after its premiere in the producer Paul Gregory’s hometown of Des Moines Iowa as a fundraiser for the local YMCA, as our faithful chronicler reminds, the genre-setting Southern Gothic thriller directed by Charles Laughton, his first and last cinematic work preferring the stage to the screen, was received unfavourably by critics and audience as being too avant-garde and abstract, but upon reevaluation has been named among the best films ever made, ranked second only to Citizen Kane. Adapted from the 1953 novel of the same name by Davis Grubb and drawing from the true-crime story of Harry F Powers, Dutch-born Harm Drenth who immigrated to West Virginia—a serial-killer who lured his victims through “lonely hearts” classifieds, Harry Powell, portrayed by Robert Mitchum, is arrested during the Great Depression, apprehended for driving a car registered as stolen, and serves his sentence with inmates of a botched bank robbery however with the pilfered ten-thousand dollars still missing. The heist’s architect hanged for the killing of murder of two police during its execution, once released, his cellmate—posing as an itinerant preacher, travels to the robbers’ hometown, charismatically wedding the executed’s widow (Willa, played by Shelly Winters—previously) and ingratiating himself on his step-children to learn the location of the cache. Wanting to restore the attentiveness and atmosphere of silent movies, the director studied the blocking and lighting of films from that era and employed techniques, like not shooting with traditional takes but rather leaving the cameras rolling and sound equipment on until the reels ran out with editors and engineers on the set, how directing was done before talkies, and used nitrate prints—though the studio had urged Laughton to make a colour film.
Via { feuilleton }, we are pleased to have had made the acquaintance of visual artist and experimental filmmaker, Ed Emschwiller, a WWII veteran who used his GI bill educational stipend to study at École des Beaux Arts (there meeting his wife and co-creative, scif-fi novelist Carol Fries) and the Art Students League of New York in the late 1940s. Using his veterans’ benefits again, the couple bought a house in Levittown, pursuing their art from a home studio—described as the only beatniks in the, segregated, planned community of Long Island. Often using Carol as a model for his commercial work, Emschwiller (usually signing his painting with the titular abbreviation) created covers for pulp publications including Galaxy, Infinity and Astounding Stories magazines, as well as paperback covers for Philip K Dick and Samuel R Delaney, whom considered his wife a peer. Despite a lucrative career and garnering several Hugo Awards (see previously here and here), in the early 1960s—in part inspired by Andy Warhol and the New American Cinema movement—Emschwiller turned to Factory-style filmmaking in suburbia with multimedia performance vignettes, as well as cinematography for documentaries on diverse subjects from Bob Dylan, voter-registration drives in Mississippi to the New York art scene for diverse commissions from the US Information Agency, NASA and Expo ’67. In the late 1970s, Emschwiller became interested in computer animation, eventually becoming professor and provost of the CalArts of the institutions television workshop and laboratory. More examples of Ed Emschwiller’s work spanning all the stages of his career and incomplete filmography are curated by Dennis Cooper at the link above.
Recognised in retrospect by epidemiologists as the first outbreak of the lethal atypical pneumonia and upper respiratory tract infection, the first delegates who had attended the America Legion convention of US veterans of foreign wars concluding a couple of days prior at the luxury Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in central Philadelphia began dying from a mysterious disease on this date in 1976. A total of one hundred eighty two cases, resulting in twenty nine fatalities, the only common factor among the identified infected was presence at the hotel, whose occupancy rate plummeted subsequently due to negative publicity and would close permanently in November of the same year. Over the next months, public health researchers identified the reservoir and vector of the illness as a particularly pertinacious, hitherto unknown bacterium in a symbiotic relationship with amoebae that thrive in industrial water systems like water tanks, hot tubs or in this case the evaporative condensers of large air conditioning units. Despite lessons gleaned from this deadly event, many cases of legionellosis have occurred throughout the world—including outbreaks in an apartment complex in Murcia, Spain, a nursing home in Toronto, a hospital in Lisbon and prison in northern California, all traced to contaminated rooftop cooling towers for climate control systems.
After showing his cards by pushing for an extension of the ceasefire and memorandum of understanding told that the world was four weeks away from economic collapse due to energy shocks, Trump also over-shares his decision to scale back strikes, driven by critically low munition supplies. Touting the pause as a space for diplomacy, Iran has also halted retaliatory attacks on Gulf allies hosting US bases. During the hostage crisis, Tehran waited out the Carter administration for four-hundred forty-four days to time their release with Reagan’s inauguration. Separately, Iran and Oman have continued negotiations about management of the Strait of Hormuz and the Supreme Leader insists that Lebanese territorial integrity must be included in any future negotiations with Washington. Netanyahu, under considerable political pressure to show his campaigns against Iran and Hezbollah have been effective as he is up for reelection and has been critical of the US willingness to try to make a deal, is to meet with Trump on Tuesday.
We enjoyed this cover version of Raymond Scott’s animation studio staple Powerhouse (see previously) as performed on blown-bottles. The background music for chase and assembly line scenes for Warner Bros cartoons, featured in over forty shorts, first debuted on CBS Radio’s Saturday Night Swing Club in early 1937 with the same first take by the quintette (actually a sextette with piano, saxophone, clarinet, trumpet, double bass and drums but called the former to keep one’s mind on the melody)—this and “Toy Trumpet” remaining in the band’s repertoire for decades and has been sampled by numerous other franchises, including The Simpsons, SpongeBob and Ren & Stimpy, and in musical homages, such as Devo and They Might Be Giants since. Other popular session titles were “Twilight in Turkey, “Reckless Night on Board an Ocean Liner” and “War Dance for Wooden Indians,” and whilst best known for his jazzy improvised production pieces, Scott is also considered a pioneer of electronic music and audio engineering, developing multi-track and layering techniques, plus inventing the Electronium and Clavivox as well as consulting with peer Bob Moog on the synthesiser and working with Jim Henson in his later years and composing experimental songs for the Muppets and Motown record producer Berry Gordy. See more renditions by the trio GlasBlasSing, currently touring Germany, from Laughing Squid at the link above.
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