Carl Gardner of The Coasters Is Gone

Carl Gardner is on the left.

Move the mouse to the Guardian obit.

Visit The Prof's other blog, Nipper and Me for some toonz.

Gunnar Fischer 1910-2011

Ingmar Bergman and Gunnar Fischer

Read the details at MUBI and follow those links.



The Seventh Seal

Summer Interlude

The Magician

Wild Strawberries





Reading Giddins "Avidly, Avidly"

The Prof eagerly peeled off the shrink-wrap and admired the packaging for the new Criterion DVD of Sweet Smell of Success, relishing the thought of the feast to come: the film restored with a commentary track, and a whole disc of extras including a full length documentary on director Alexander Mackendrick.  But it turned out the booklet that comes with the film was no mere appetizer--it was a banquet unto itself.  (Yeah, the Prof just said "unto."  Don't get shirty.)  The best thing in the very packed booklet is Gary Giddins' essay which weaves together the historical details and an appreciation of the contributions of Tony Curits, cinematographer James Wong Howe, story writer Ernest Lehman, and screenplay writer Clifford Odets.  Giddins also surveys earlier and later films with similar themes and styles, and does some literary detective work linking the film with The Great Gatsby.  It's beautifully written.  Go read it at Criterion's site.

Whew!  And the Prof learned by accident while linking you, fair reader, to the site that Criterion has just released the elusive Kon Ichikawa masterpiece The Makioka Sisters at what is, for Criterion, a bargain price.  More on that and Ray's Jalsaghar (The Music Room) as the Prof gets his sweaty mitts on them.

RIP Remmy Ongala

An obituary from The Guardian here.
 
Here's a mixtape from his three best albums and his AIDS PSA "Things with Socks"  (condoms, get it?) that was banned from Tanzanian radio and became a hit nonetheless.  (Check track 6.)

REMMY ONGALA MIXTAPE

Music Playlist at MixPod.com>

Here's a video of The Doctor performing in 1988:

In Memoriam Tony Moore

Tony in a recent photo with the text book he so lovingly crafted for the course he created.

I spent most of the day yesterday with my friends Brenda and Brian, children of my dear friend Tony Moore, who passed away this week.  (Details in The Courier-Post article here.  An earlier profile from October here.)
Aside from being a dynamite teacher, a gentle man, and a novelist, Tony was also one of the most fanatical devotees of recorded music.  (If The Prof said the man had an enormous music collection, you know what that means.)  We searched throughout his recordings for sounds that meant something special for his memorial service.  Brenda remembered a passage from his novel No Second Eden in which the protagonist hears a bluesman sing the great spiritual "You Got to Walk That Lonesome Valley."  She quickly located this version by Mississippi John Hurt:



Click on the thumbnail below for the audio version:

Playing Around with the New Player

Create a MySpace Playlist at MixPod.com


Testing the new widget.

Dan Levinson and Mark Shane with Molly Ryan at Mt. Laurel Free Public Library