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hearthesilence wrote: Mon Jul 31, 2023 9:04 pm What really hits hard about O'Connor and Reubens is how progressive they were and how much the world's kind of grown into their work. I noticed that dramatically over the past seven years with O'Connor, who I was already listening to regularly. With Reubens, that was especially apparent when you watch those shows and listen to the sit-down interviews on the bonus material. All the changes in Hollywood in recent years regarding diversity and equality was done on his show back then (in the Reagan era) under Reubens's directive. S. Epatha Merkerson and Laurence Fishburne talk about this, and it wasn't just the cast: Fisburne (who had been acting for film and television going back to Apocalypse Now) mentions that he immediately noticed a lot of women and people of color in crew positions that were normally filled by white males. A lot of these people were fresh out of film school, which brings up another one of the show's great charms: it hired a lot of underground artists, bringing their work into the mainstream but with little compromise - Reubens ultimately signed off on everything, but their imaginations had free reign, though initially it was a very scrappy production, virtually a downtown NYC art project before the success of the first season took the show to more a spacious and comfortable stage in Los Angeles. It changed the lives of guys like Gary Panter and the then-unknown Wayne White. Everyone seems to look back at the show with great fondness - one producer said he never produced another kids' show even though he got a ton of offers because he knew he wouldn't come close to matching Pee-Wee. He also knew a lot of that had to do with Pee-Wee's autonomy, something he likely would not experience on another kids' show, and it would've been too disappointing and too heartbreaking. (Those who went on to other kids' shows found out first hand how different it was.)

It's too bad the extras on the Blu-ray are mostly out-of-print and didn't carry over to streaming with the restored episodes because they are packed with information. I especially liked Mark Mothersbaugh's interview - the show was what got him into film scoring, something he never considered before. After doing the theme song, they approached him about doing the WHOLE show, and he balked, asking if he could just do half of the episodes. It was a fortunate decision because it opened the door to the Residents, Mark Snow, Danny Elfman, Todd Rundgren, Frank Zappa's son Dweezil, Jeff Baxter, Stanley Clarke, Van Dyke Parks, even George Clinton. Mothersbaugh was so green, towards the end of the first season, someone handling sound for post-production asked him "I'm just curious, why don't you ever use timecode?" Mothersbaugh: "what's timecode?" Regardless, the process was immensely rewarding - as he tells it, with Devo, it was a grueling process of planning an album, recording an album, putting it out, touring the world to promote it, then starting over for the next cycle. With Pee-Wee, he'd get an episode to watch, spend a day or two composing, then another to record, FedEx the tape, and then that Saturday he would see and hear his work on television, all within the span of a week, something he found immensely gratifying. It was a tough show and everyone was getting burned out, but you can tell they were really happy to be on it and about what they were doing. It's also sweet how Reubens was so grateful to his crew - they had THE best crew gifts, even a yearbook as if they were all in high school. And according to a few people including Mothersbaugh, Pee Wee never forgot their birthday, even after the show ended.

hearthesilence wrote: Wed Jul 26, 2023 6:42 pm
Just heartbreaking. I haven't looked at the news just yet, but given her struggles over many years, I imagine it's what's been feared for a very long time. Absolutely loved her music, and it was wonderful to see something like a resurgence over the past decade as people re-discovered her or re-evaluated what they overlooked. (There was a stretch in the '00s where I felt like no one I knew ever talked about her, much less put on her records, which was remarkable for someone who had attained massive popularity not that long ago.) She was probably my favorite singer of the past 40 years, certainly my favorite outside of jazz. Her second and most popular album remains her best, a landmark, but anyone willing to dive deeper will be richly rewarded.

j99 wrote: Tue Aug 01, 2023 5:40 pm I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got. A brilliant album, and proof there was more to her than Nothing Compares 2 U. Three Babies is stunning, probably my favourite ever Sinead song. What a voice!

https://youtu.be/I4Sp7hVI4Ak

barryconvex wrote:That is awful. He had soul, you could see it in his eyes and was beautifully unpolished in Euphoria.

Ribs wrote: Thu Aug 03, 2023 12:23 pm Carl Davis

colinr0380 wrote: Thu Aug 03, 2023 3:11 pm If Channel 4 had any sense,

Sloper wrote: Fri Aug 04, 2023 10:30 am Carl Davis is one of the main reasons I fell in love with silent films

therewillbeblus wrote:Mark Margolis

hearthesilence wrote: Tue Aug 01, 2023 6:59 pm That's one of my very favorite albums of the '90s. A while back, Greil Marcus mentioned he had an epiphany when he looked at a photo of O'Connor and realized her image brought to mind Renée Falconetti in Carl Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc. Pretty amazing considering 1) everything that happened when she confronted the Catholic Church and 2) IIRC O'Connor originally shaved her head on a whim, more inspired by punk fashion than anything else, and she did it again after her career got started because of a label executive who pushed her to accentuate her looks, so it was not a self-conscious attempt to emulate Joan of Arc. However, I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got always struck me as rock's aesthetic equivalent to Dreyer's film - they're both masterworks that are just raw to the bone in terms of how exposed they are, and aesthetically they're so sparse and stripped down that they have that focused and concentrated power of the best minimalist works.