The Song of the Lark ~ A Painting by Winslow Homer

The Song of the Lark (1876) by Winslow Homer

During the decades after the Civil War, Winslow Homer was America’s foremost painter of everyday life. His realist depictions of laboring farmers, rugged wilderness guides, and storm-tossed New England fishermen stressed the powerful relationship between man and nature. By the time The Song of the Lark was painted, American farmers had largely replaced the scythe with the more efficient mechanical reaper. By depicting a farmer with a scythe, Homer nostalgically alludes to a simpler time.

by allen0997

Annihilation ~ A Capsule Movie Review

Annihilation ~ A Capsule Movie Review by Allen Kopp

Annihilation is a science fiction/horror story based on a novel by Jeff Vandermeer. Lena (Natalie Portman) is former military, a biologist specializing in cellular development who teaches medical students in a university. Her husband, Kane (Oscar Isaac), also in the military, went on a secret mission a year ago and never came back. Lena wants some answers.

Three years before the action of the story takes place, a streak came out of the sky and settled on a lighthouse on an unspecified beach and, after that, mysterious things began happening. There’s some kind of force field emanating from the lighthouse and it’s getting bigger all the time. Nobody knows what’s going on. When teams of scientists go to the lighthouse to investigate, they never come back. It turns out that Lena’s husband, Kane, was one of those who went to investigate. After being gone for a year, missing and presumed dead, he casually turns up again one day. He’s not himself, though. He doesn’t know where he’s been or what has happened to him. He becomes violently ill, Lena summons an ambulance, and while he and Lena are enroute to the hospital in the ambulance, it is stopped in a not-very-subtle way by what appears to be a convoy; Kane and Lena are taken into custody.

Lena awakens, after being sedated, in what is apparently a military facility. She is told that Kane is very critically ill and is probably dying, but nobody knows exactly what’s wrong with him. Lena isn’t allowed to leave the facility. She becomes acquainted with some of the other people there, who just all happen to be women. Some of them decide they will go on an expedition, led by psychologist Dr. Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh), to Area X, the strange area surrounding the lighthouse that is getting bigger all the time (the fear is that it will soon encompass the entire world). This area is also known as the “Shimmer.” It’s probably a suicide mission, because, as we know, none of the people who have gone to investigate the Shimmer have ever returned.

So, we have five women going into the Shimmer on this very dangerous mission, including Lena and Dr. Ventress. The first thing that happens to them is they can’t remember anything and seem to have lost time (days? weeks?) for which they have no explanation.

The Shimmer is a frightening but also a beautiful place where the laws of nature seem to be turned upside down. Unusual and colorful flowers, unlike any seen in the real world, grow in profusion. And, if that isn’t enough, species have apparently been mutated with other species, which the members of the expedition discover when they are attacked by a vicious, enormous alligator that behaves in a very aggressive way and runs as fast as a dog. Later, there is a kind of a faceless bear that is intent on killing them. This is the stuff of nightmares.

Some of the women in the expedition meet horrible deaths, as you might expect, but Lena, our main character, makes it to the lighthouse. What she discovers there will confuse you and leave you wondering but will not bore you. Since Annihilation is the first installment of a trilogy, I’m figuring there will be a sequel, as long as this movie makes enough of a jingle at the box office.

A full explanation is never given of what the Shimmer is, but my takeaway is that it’s an alien life force that will slowly but gradually consume the earth without the aliens (whoever they are) ever lifting a finger (do they have fingers?) or engaging in any kind of warfare with earthlings. Maybe I’m wrong, but this is the only explanation that comes to hand at the moment.

Annihilation is challenging science fiction, unlike silly space adventures geared to the youth market. It’s the same kind of cerebral science fiction as Arrival, a movie from 2016. In both movies, the principal character (a woman in both cases) confronts the profound and unimaginable. We live vicariously through these characters because none of us will ever confront the profound and unimaginable, except maybe when we die.

Copyright © 2018 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Tab Hunter Confidential ~ A Capsule Book Review

Tab Hunter Confidential ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp

Arthur Gelien (pronounced “ge-Leen”) was born in 1931. He grew up in a fatherless home with a struggling mother and an older brother. He was always fond of horses and for a while, in his teens, was a figure skater. When he was twenty, thanks to his blond, photogenic, all-American good looks and his pleasing personality (but no acting experience), he was on the verge of becoming a movie star. A Hollywood agent changed Arthur’s name to Tab Hunter. The same Hollywood agent, Henry Willson, also gave to the world such notable monikers as Rock Hudson, Rory Calhoun, Guy Madison and Troy Donahue. If you ever needed a made-up name, Henry Willson was the man to go to.

Tab landed roles in a few movies, but they were secondary roles that required little or no acting ability. Despite the less-than-satisfactory quality of his movie roles, he made “good copy.” Movie magazines and gossip rags loved to write about him, and he increased their circulation. Teenage girls loved him and he became a bonafide—and profitable—teen idol. Soon he was more famous for being famous than for his movies. (He made a record, although he had never sung before, of a song called “Young Love,” which became a number-one hit.) He was frequently paired with Natalie Wood or other Hollywood starlets, with whom he was photographed at movie premieres and glamorous Hollywood functions.

Most (or all) of the stuff written about Tab Hunter was as phony as his name. He was never romantically interested in Natalie Wood or any other actress because he was (is) gay. He was involved sexually with Anthony Perkins, figure skating champion Robbie Robertson, actor Scott Marlowe, Austrian actor Helmut Berger, ballet star Rudolf Nureyev, and others. The idea was to keep his sexuality hidden so that his millions of adoring female followers believed he was “available” (unmarried) and they might have a chance with him. If they had known he was gay, his viability as a male sex symbol would have been undermined.

Tab worked with big stars like Linda Darnell, Vincent Price, John Wayne, Lana Turner, Sophia Loren, Rita Hayworth and Gary Cooper, but he never achieved top-star status himself. He was typecast as the pretty boy and the parts he was offered were mostly one-dimensional crap. He landed a seven-year studio contract, but he bought his way out of the contract before it expired because nobody would take him seriously as an actor. At the age of thirty, his movie career was essentially finished. He made some television appearances and had his own TV series, The Tab Hunter Show, which failed miserably. He appeared on Broadway with Tallulah Bankhead in a revival of a Tennessee Williams play, The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore, but the play folded after only three performances. He then spent some time in Europe making “spaghetti” westerns and low-budget potboilers for feather-brained audiences. Today he is a Hollywood afterthought, a briefly popular fifties actor who had no substance or staying power.

If you like behind-the-scenes showbiz stories, you’ll love Tab Hunter Confidential. Tab wrote it himself, of course, with the help of a “ghost writer” named Eddie Muller. When you look at people in the movies, you don’t know what they’ve had to go through to get up there on the big screen. Tab Hunter Confidential will give you some idea of what goes on behind the scenes in the life of a movie star. It’s a fun book and it’s easy reading. Take a break from reading the weighty stuff and take a walk on the wild side with Arthur Gelien/Tab Hunter. You’ll be glad you did. You have nothing to feel guilty about.

Copyright © 2018 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997