The Film Critic Pauline Kael

Readers familiar with websit's ebb and flow will know that November marks a change in bathroom reading. Gone is last year's People's Almanac #3 (1981) and in its place something I picked up at the MCC Thrift Shop on yesterday's late-morning walk -- a 650 page collection of New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael's 1972-1975 film reviews.

The first entry in Reeling (1977) appears under the chapter title "Soul Food". In an artful pairing, Kael discusses two films -- Sounder (1972) and The Emigrants (1972) -- and leaves it the reader to wonder why.

So what do we know about these two films? Sounder is a dog, a coon hound. The family he lives with are Depression-era Black sharecroppers; not slaves like the parents' parents' generation but enslaved by Jim Crow laws that were enforced in the American South as late as 1965. The emigrants in this case are Swedes who came willingly to the United States in the mid-19th century, many of whom settled in north-central winter states like Minnesota. Traces of Swedish immigration can be found in later films like the Cohen Brothers' Fargo (1996).

Buster Keaton

Orson Welles says Buster Keaton's The General (1926), made near the end of the "silent era", is one of the greatest films ever. However, upon its initial release, critics were ambivalent, and the greater public, who don't generally care what critics think, responded similarly.

The General lost money, and Keaton his independence as a film artist.

Keaton died in 1966, a couple years after the CBC documentary at the top of this post.

A small room behind a bay window. A single bed, a table and chair, and a sink. I could manage something larger, with more conveniences, but I could never match the view.

All day long, from 7am to midnight, the rain fell. I could hear it on the concrete walkway, the wooden porch, an upturned glass.

More rain today, turning to showers in the afternoon.

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

"Five emerging Canadian philanthropists wear brilliant holiday fashion"

The headline reads like something you might hear on CBC Radio's carefully funny This Is That. But nope, it is an article from this weekend's Globe and Mail.

What have we to learned?

That philanthropy is intergenerational:

“It was something that was really important to both of us, to show the transition of a cause and how two generations can be supportive of it,” says Jen McCain.

That people can be herded:

“It’s fun for me to put people in a room and see what happens. What’s the worst that could happen? They don’t have a good time? They’ll get over it!” says Barbara Frum.

That:

“It’s okay not to be okay," says Meghan Yuri Young.

That you can have it all:

“I love traditional, but I think you can be contemporary too, and excel at both," says Tanner Kidd.

That the Toronto society scene is:

“not part of my world,” says Sage Paul.

Jack's Book

Yesterday over coffee Rolf gave me a small book by the English painter and critic Robin Ironside. Entitled Painting Since 1939 (London: Longman, Green & Co., 1947), the book is a chaptered 40 page essay that, when not stumbling over its bombast, offers a "General Character of British Painting" (sans Vorticism); a review of Fry's critical influence; a recognition of an emergent "Neo-Romantic" energy (of which Ironside was a force), followed by its "Development"; a detour into the War Artists Advisory Committee, before concluding with some notes on a "Rising Generation", a group that includes a "very amateur" Lucien Freud (below, 1945).

While we hear a lot about Bacon, Bell, Moore, Nash and Sutherland (below, 1940), there is little discussion of paintings made by women. Only Frances Mary Hodgkins and Ethel Walker bear mention: the former described as a member of the Seven and Five Society in her bio; the latter described as a painter of "portraits, flower-pieces, sea-pieces and decorative compositions" in hers.

The best part of this book, or why Rolf gave it to me, concerns its previous owner, whose name and address are written on its cover. Crossed out next to "886 Thurlow St, Vancouver B.C." is "J. L. Shadbolt 128 Monroe St. New York, NY."

Here is a text supplied by Heffel Fine Art Auction House that describes Shadbolt's year in NYC:

"From September 1948 to August 1949, Jack Shadbolt was in New York City, during a time of great vitality in the visual arts that saw the emergence of the New York School of painters. While there, he was drawn to the work of painters such as Arshile Gorky and Pablo Picasso, whose monumental anti-war painting Guernica electrified the art world. Emerging from the shadow of World War II and its anxieties, Shadbolt felt that only abstraction could express the spirit of the times and began to produce vital works such as this one. This powerful watercolour is a study for Shadbolt’s 1948 oil The Great Ones [below], sold for a record price in Heffel’s spring 2009 auction. Both are early abstract works that still retain ties to figuration—for as Scott Watson maintained, “Works like The Great Ones depict fierce abstract totem figures.” Shadbolt was still abstracting from something, whether figures or from nature, and his abstract works were symbolic. Works such as this marked a turning point in Shadbolt’s career and helped to establish his prominence as one of Canada’s leading modernist painters."

Business Models

“What’s come to be shocking to us is this continued, sort of premise, that people have the right to be so hateful and the judge and jury of a business model,” she said. “We’re selling hot lemon water for $3.50 and providing a wonderful place where they can consume that lemon water. There’s no part of us that understands why that piece of the conversation is continually being driven forward.”

I see nothing wrong with making lemon water a menu item. Lemons cost money. So does City supplied water. Heating the water also costs money. Same with clearing away and cleaning out the vessel. Same with the rent on the building it is consumed in. Indeed, there are many costs associated with running a business, some of which can be lost on the patron.

Back in 1993, when I started the 99-seat Malcolm Lowry Room ("Sometimes you want to go where nobody knows your name"), my biggest challenge was how to get a largely Vancouver audience to trek out to North Burnaby to drink my liquor and see my shows. What I came up with was a business model that included free admission, paying the talent more than they were making at similar-sized venues, and cheap alcohol. My model was based on the quality of talent and the quantity of beer sales. And it worked. Not super well, but well enough that when people came to see a show and settled into an evening of tap water, they knew enough to tip their server.