Wanted: actor with naked ambition
| John Patterson asks for more dick.
Month: October 2007
When It Takes Three People to Make a Duet
When It Takes Three People to Make a Duet
| Robert Plant, Alison Krauss & T Bone Burnett.
“The game is afoot!”
Jeremy Brett in The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle.
A few words of praise for Jeremy Brett is his role as the world’s greatest detective, for my money the definitive screen Sherlock Holmes. I’ve spent the past few weeks working my way through the complete run of TV adaptations that Granada Television produced from 1984 to 1993, being bowled over again by Brett’s mastery of the role. It took me a while to notice these when they were first screened, British television was churning out a lot of costume drama at the time and the sight of more Hansom cabs and gas lamps paled beside the audacity and excitement of contemporary thrillers such as the BBC’s Edge of Darkness. I think I caught on during the second season that Brett’s performance was something special, and that these adaptations were treating the Holmes stories with a veracity rarely seen before.
The art of Michiko Hoshino
Library Recollection II (1993).
Artist Michiko Hoshino (born 1934) has produced a number of lithograph portfolios based on the work of Jorge Luis Borges. More inspirations than illustrations, which is no bad thing, with disembodied clock faces and—unsurprisingly—books among the melting textures.
Garden of Borges—Labyrinth (2001).
• A Japanese gallery page
• An American gallery page
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The etching and engraving archive
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Penguin Labyrinths and the Thief’s Journal
Deborah Kerr, 1921–2007
The Innocents.
A great British actress died this week. She was also something of a movie star in the Fifties, rolling in the surf with Burt Lancaster in From Here to Eternity (1953) and standing up to Yul Brynner in The King and I (1956). Prior to that she starred in two films for Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) (where she played three roles) and Black Narcissus (1947). But for me she’ll always be the (literally) haunted Miss Giddens in The Innocents (1961), Jack Clayton’s superb adaptation of The Turn of the Screw. Still one of the most effective screen ghost stories; try and see it this Halloween.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Freddie Francis, 1917–2007