6 August 2015 - DAVID LYNCH

DAVID LYNCH

G'day folks,

Director and screenwriter David Lynch is known for dark, offbeat films that include 'Eraserhead' and 'Blue Velvet,' and for creating the television series 'Twin Peaks.'

  “Absurdity is what I like most in life, and there's humor in struggling in ignorance. If you saw a man repeatedly running into a wall until he was a bloody pulp, after a while it would make you laugh because it becomes absurd.”

—David Lynch

Synopsis

Born in Montana in 1946, famed filmmaker David Lynch studied art before experimenting with film in the late '60s. In 1977, his first feature, Eraserhead, made its debut, going on to become a cult classic. He next directed The Elephant Man, for which he received two Academy Award nominations among a host of others for the film. Lynch has also directed Blue Velvet and created the acclaimed television series Twin Peaks. A vocal proponent of transcendental meditation, Lynch has added to his film ouevre with works like Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive.

 Early Years

David Keith Lynch was born in Missoula, Montana on January 20, 1946. Lynch moved frequently as a child due to his father's work as a research scientist. While still a student at a high school in Virginia, he began taking art classes at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C. After high school, Lynch made his way through Boston, Europe and Philadelphia to study art further.

The Filmmaker

In the 1960s, David Lynch began making short films, beginning with the animated Six Men Getting Sick (1966) and The Alphabet (1967), a combination of animation and live action. The Grandmother (1970) was Lynch's first completely live-action short film.

In the early 1970s, Lynch started work on his first feature film, Eraserhead, which premiered in 1977. The bizarre movie had a dark worldview, disturbing subject matter and a surreal tone, but it garnered enough attention to land Lynch the job of directing The Elephant Man (1980), starring John Hurt. That film received eight Academy Award nominations, including two for Lynch in the categories of directing and adapted screenplay.

Lynch's next directing gig wouldn't go quite as well, as he was picked to helm the science fiction film Dune (1984), an adaptation of a well-loved book starring Kyle MacLachlan and Sting, among many others. The movie was plagued with production problems and received scathing reviews upon its release.

Chilling 'Blue Velvet'

In typical Lynchian fashion, the director recovered by turning back to his own vision, coming out with Blue Velvet in 1986. The film, which starred MacLachlan, Laura Dern and Isabella Rossellini, took a chilling look at small-town life. Though its darker moments led to some outraged reactions, Lynch received critical accolades and a second Academy Award nomination for directing. Lynch would continue in a similar vein with the violent Wild at Heart (1990). This controversial film won the Palme d'Or at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival.

Clancy's comment: Mm ... Another creative spirit.

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14 April 2014 - CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE

G'day folks,

Ever heard of Christopher Marlowe? I hadn't either, but here is some interesting background on the man.

Christopher Marlowe was baptized on 26th February 1564 in Canterbury, England. His exact date of birth is unknown. He was a poet, dramatist and translator of the Elizabethan Era in fact he was the first Elizabethan tragedian. He studied at ‘The King’s School’ and then got a scholarship to ‘Corpus Christi College’, Cambridge. He graduated with Bachelors in Arts in 1584. ‘Dido, Queen of Carthage’ was his first drama. It was acted on by a group of young actors known as ‘Children of the Chapel’ somewhere in between 1587 to 1593 although we know it was published in 1594.

His play ‘Tamburlaine the Great’ was performed on the stage in 1587 in London. This play was among the first of the ‘blank verse’ plays. It became an instant success. This was the only play published during his lifetime whereas all others were published posthumously. ‘The Jew of Malta’ was about a Jewish character who takes revenge on the city establishments. 

Christopher Marlowe wrote this play in 1589 or 1590 however we know for sure that the play was performed in 1592. It was very successful and remained popular for the next five decades. Its oldest edition to have been survived is one from 1633 even though it was put in the ‘Stationer’s Register’ in 1594. Marlowe’s play titled ‘Edward the Second’ was about King Edward and his removal by the Queen and Barons who disapprove of the extra influence of his favorite people in the court. This play was also put in the Stationer’s Register in 1593 which was almost a month after Marlowe died.

 

Christopher Marlowe’s work called ‘The Massacre at Paris’ is his shortest work. It shows the events that took place in 1572 on Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. ‘The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus’ is his fourth play which was based on ‘Faustbuch’ and how a scholar deals with the devil. This play was edited so much that scholars today find it hard to comment on it. There are versions of the play available; one dates back to 1604 known as A Text and the other is from 1616 known as B text. Scholars believe that the A text seems more like the work of Marlowe because of the irregular characters and the particular spellings.

Christopher Marlowe was known to be a government spy as speculated by many scholars based on several evidences found in his life. There were many discrepancies in his record. It is often assumed that he was the ‘Morley’ who was to teach ‘Arbella Stuart’ (an English Renaissance noblewoman) as there was no person by this name with an MA. There are several stories about Marlowe’s death. Some say that he was stabbed to death due to his rivalry over a woman; others say that he was in a drunken fight. The official account however is that on 30th May 1593, he was in an argument over a bill with Ingram Frizer (a gentleman and a businessman). Marlowe hit him on the head and Frizer retaliated by stabbing him above the eye killing him right away. Marlowe was only 29 years old at the time. He was a well-regarded and prominent personality among contemporary writers and he has contributed immensely to the literary world.

Clancy's comment: An interesting but short life, and his works are still available today.

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21 March 2014 - D.H. LAWRENCE

D.H. LAWRENCE

• NAME: D.H. Lawrence
• OCCUPATION: Journalist, Author, Playwright, Poet
• BIRTH DATE: September 11, 1885
• DEATH DATE: March 02, 1930
• EDUCATION: Nottingham High School, University College of Nottingham
• PLACE OF BIRTH: Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, England, United Kingdom
• PLACE OF DEATH: Vence, France
• Full Name: David Herbert Lawrence
• AKA: David H. Lawrence
• AKA: D.H. Lawrence
• AKA: David Lawrence 

G'day folks,

Welcome to the life and times of D. H. Lawrence. David Herbert Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. Born in England on September 11, 1885, D.H. Lawrence is regarded as one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. Lawrence published many novels and poetry volumes during his lifetime, including Sons and Lovers and Women in Love, but is best known for his infamous novel Lady Chatterley's Lover. The graphic and highly sexual novel was published in Italy in 1928, but was banned in the United States until 1959. 

David Herbert Lawrence was a poet, short story writer and novelist, born in Nottingham in 1885. He was best known for being a novelist. Lawrence published his initial works in 1909, which included a collection of poems, many of them were representations of nature and have since then become immensely famous and widely read, and have also influenced a lot of the contemporary poets. His primary collections have a lot of inspiration drawn from the Imagist and the Ezra Pound movement, which later reached its maximum in the 20th century. Even though Pound endeavoured to make Lawrence a part of his writer-followers, Lawrence on the other hand wanted to seek a more autonomous path. 

Lawrence wrote poetry that had profound and elusive themes, and were also very true to the forces, which inspired it. The most renowned of his works deal with the physical and inner life of living things such as animals and plants. Some of them have a bitter and satirical tone, which show his fury at the pretence and Puritanism of the typical Anglo-Saxon society. He was also a rebellious writer, harbouring radical perceptions, who considered sex to be the most rudimentary subconscious and also regarded nature to cure the evils of the advanced industrialized society. 

His work was extremely creative, although the quality would be a little irregular and he was also very controversial, continuously engaged in censorship cases, which received a great amount of publicity, particularly for his novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which was published in 1928. He has a vast collection of poetry to his credit, which includes the likes of Look! We Have Come Through which was published in 1917, and also poems about his wife – Birds, Beasts and Flowers published in 1923 and Pansies in 1929, which was banned at the time of publication in England. 

Other than his perpetual trouble with the censors, Lawrence was maltreated even during the time of World War 1 due to the supposed pro-German sympathies of his wife, Frieda. Consequently, he left England and then traveled relentlessly across Germany, Italy, Australia, Ceylon, Tahiti, New Zealand, Mexico, The French Riviera and the United States, fruitlessly in the search of a new homeland. While he was in Taos, New Mexico, he became the fascination of a group of females, who began to consider themselves as his disciples and vied to get his attention, which became a major literary legend. Lawrence suffered from tuberculosis all his life and finally succumbed to the disease at the age of 44 in France.

Clancy's comment:  I did read 'Sons and Lovers' at school, but the priests and brothers wouldn't allow us to read 'Lady Chatterley's Lover'. I wonder why?

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