Arts & Culture

Below are the lyrics to four powerful anti-establishment songs that were performed and recorded by the song-writing/singing duo, Ethan Miller and Kate Boverman, back in 2005. The pair were “Back to the Land Movement” advocates/activists from Maine. Miller and Boverman are currently part of a farm collective in a rural part of the state (for more info, click on https://www.landincommon.org/board-of-directors/ ). The album was titled “If All the Land Would Rise”, a devastating expose of some of the worst corporate/government corruption in America, corruption that was just raising its ugly head. Miller and Boverman very accurately identified some of the culprits – and named some of them.

As Jews and refugees increasingly come under attack, the ​Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts returns to live theater with the world premiere of a play about a Jewish immigrant. Tevye in New York! imagines what happened to the Ukrainian dairyman depicted in the popular Broadway musical Fiddler on the Roof, which in turn is based on Sholem Aleichem’s short stories written in the 1890s. As those familiar with Fiddler may recall, the show ends with a pogrom (race riot) that, with only a three day notice (!!!) expels Tevye and his family from their Ukrainian village of Anatevka, and those beleaguered, bewildered, wandering Jews embark on their long march to America.

A new freely downloadable book.  I would like to announce the publication of a book, which discusses the reasons why the institution of war continues to threaten human civilization and the biosphere, and the steps that might be taken to rid the world of war. The book may be downloaded and circulated free of charge from the following link:

https://eacpe.org/app/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Why-War-by-John-Scales-Avery.pdf

Albert Einstein's letter to Sigmund Freud

“Why War?”, the title of this book, was also the title of a famous letter written to Sigmund Freud by Albert Einstein.

In that “the show must go on” spirit, live theater is returning to Los Angeles’ stages. On what used to be its adjoining parking lot, The Fountain Theatre has built an impressive Outdoor Stage, an open air, socially distanced 99-seater. So, to reverse Joni Mitchell’s admonishment in “Big Yellow Taxi”: “They paved a parking lot, And put up a playhouse.” Along with the excitement of seeing old familiar faces who’d survived the plague year-plus, your humble scribe looked forward to reviewing his first play, in person, in about 15 months.

Well, for the first time since the lockdown began, after about 15 months of streaming cinema online, your peripatetic film critic finally attended his first screening in person. The event took place June 3 at the Landmark Pico Theater, a major West Los Angeles theatrical venue where arthouse and blockbuster movies alike are shown. The occasion was the directorial debut by Ensenada-born actress Magi Avila, Altitude Not Attitude, which was preceded by a red carpet in the Landmark’s lobby. The celebs who walked the red carpet included supermodel/actress Kelly LeBrock, who was the titular The Woman in Red in that 1984 Gene Wilder romcom.

This was followed by a well-attended reception inside one of the multiplex’s theaters, where a bartender provided libations and servers made the rounds with delicious appetizers that were each adorned by mini-flags from the countries of origin for the hors d’oeuvres, catered by Chef Stacie Rauch of The Personal Palate. For instance, chocolatey mini-mousses were topped by diminutive French Tricolours.

Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 feature Apocalypse Now depicted war crimes committed by U.S. troops against Vietnamese people: An unforgettable, operatic, bone chilling chopper air raid attacking a Viet Cong village set to Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” so a surfer whose name is initialed “LBJ” can ride the gnarly waves there (Ride of the Valkyries - Apocalypse Now (3/8) Movie CLIP (1979) HD - YouTube); a Yankee patrol boat opens fire on a traditional Vietnamese craft after a woman tries to protect a puppy (APOCALYPSE NOW - I told you don´t stop - YouTube); and so on.

I would like to announce the publication of a book which discusses the things that I have experienced during my 67 years of work in the peace movement. The book may be freely downloaded and circulated from the following links:

https://eacpe.org/67-years-in-the-peace-movement/

https://eacpe.org/app/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/67-years-in-the-peace-movement-by-John-Scales-Avery.pdf

Holger Terp's invitation

Just in case you haven’t had enough of those “Masterpiece Theater” type of prestigious, polished, Brit productions, the British Film Institute has launched a ​subscription video on demand collection of more than 200 of the top UK movies for buffs across the pond in the colonies. BFI Player Classics offers the cream of the crop across genres, ranging from thrillers to comedies to horror to sci fi to documentaries and beyond.

The movies are categorized as “Collections,” including “Alfred Hitchcock,” which focuses on the England-born Master of Suspense’s oeuvre before he relocated to Hollywood, such as Hitch’s 1930 whodunit Murder! “Ealing Comedies” features flicks from that eponymous studio known for its humor-laced output, some starring Alec Guinness before he used the “force” in Star Wars, in 1949’s Kind Hearts & Coronets and 1951’s The Lavender Hill Mob. The “British Classics” Collection includes Carol Reed’s 1949 postwar film noir piece de resistance The Third Man, with a cynical Orson Welles portraying the titular underworld mastermind. Interestingly, none of the 200-plus offerings include screen adaptations of William Shakespeare’s plays.

British director Paul Tanter’s droll Stealing Chaplin may be a comedy that will keep audiences laughing from beginning to end, but the other movie it reminds me of is screenwriter Kemp Powers’ One Night in Miami. Although the latter is a heavy-hitting drama, the fanciful stories of both Miami and Stealing are loosely inspired by real life events. In the case of the former, following his 1964 championship bout with Sonny Liston, Muhammad Ali really did spend much of the rest of the evening with Malcolm X, Jim Brown and Sam Cooke in a Miami motel room. Little is known of what those titans said and did that evening, but this actual, historic incident kindled Powers’ powers of imagination to conjure up what may have come to pass, which was dramatized onstage by L.A.’s Rogue Machine in 2013 and onscreen last year.

I write this as the annual Academy Awards ceremony approaches; Hollywood’s landmark Cinerama Dome, with its iconic concave screen, closes; and Prince Philip has made his last journey from Windsor Castle to St. George’s Chapel for one final pageant: His Royal Highness’ funeral. The confluence of these events has moved this film/TV historian to meditate on the audio-visual medium of moving images, the evolution of the art of storytelling from Telemachus to television, Sophocles to cinema to streaming.

The Duke of Edinburgh was actually something of an innovator in terms of screen productions. It was Prince Philip’s brainstorm to televise the 1953 coronation of his wife, which took millions around the world inside of Westminster Abbey to observe the crowning of Elizabeth II, for what was then the largest viewership of any live event out there in TV-land.