Hal Foster

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Ten Best Pre-Raphaelite Paintings?

The 10 best pre-Raphaelite paintings
Stephen Wildman, director of the Ruskin Library, chooses his favourites from the Brotherhood

Stephen Wildman
The Observer
Sunday 12 September 2010



1 John Everett Millais: Isabella (1848-49)
There were seven members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB) founded in 1848, all young artists or writers of a romantic and rebellious nature, dissatisfied with what was taught and exhibited at the Royal Academy. They took their inspiration and what the critic John Ruskin called their "unfortunate and somewhat ludicrous" name, from the idea that art before the time of Raphael – early Renaissance painting – was more direct and honest than what was later promoted in academies and textbooks. Isabella was one of the group's first major paintings. It was shown at the RA in 1849 and carries the initials PRB, carved on the chair leg. Millais combined extreme profiles and flattened perspective with sharp detail and vibrant colour. The subject the doomed lovers Lorenzo and Isabella, from Keats's 1818 poem Isabella, or The Pot of Basil.


2 Arthur Hughes: The Long Engagement (1859)
Inspired by the pre-Raphaelites while a student at the Royal Academy, Hughes maintained their style and themes long after the PRB had disbanded. He specialised in literary and romantic subjects with figures often in landscape settings, using a distinctive palette including purple from newly available pigments. This memorable two-figure composition – not forgetting the faithful dog – is a poignant commentary on a contemporary social issue: the clergyman is too poorly paid to marry, and during their long engagement ivy has grown over the name of his beloved, cut into the tree.


3 Henry Wallis: Chatterton (1855-56)
Striking images of single or double figures, frozen at a moment of tension or crisis, or even death, were a mainstay of pre-Raphaelite art. Wallis's re-creation of the suicide by poison of Thomas Chatterton, the gifted young 18th-century poet, has become an icon of the neglected genius starving in his attic. By 1856, when this was shown at the Royal Academy, pre-Raphaelitism had all but won its battle, and the young Wallis "found himself famous". There are typical pre-Raphaelite personal complications behind the painting: the model for Chatterton was the poet and novelist George Meredith, whose wife Mary Ellen ran off with the painter two years later.


4 Millais: Christ in the House of His Parents (The Carpenter's Shop) (1849-50)
This created a furore when first shown at the Royal Academy. Many were outraged by its realistic treatment of the life of Christ. So strong was the pre-Raphaelite principle of truth to nature that Millais did part of his work in an actual carpenter's shop: for the figure of Joseph the head of the artist's father was used in conjunction with the carefully observed artisan's body. Charles Dickens, a poor judge of art, was among many caustic critics, but Queen Victoria had it brought from the Academy for a private viewing.


5 Millais: Ophelia (1851-52)
Shakespeare provided a rich source for pre-Raphaelite paintings, but rarely for simple theatrical effect. Millais uses the drowning of Ophelia in Hamlet for a bravura demonstration of close nature study, many of the plants also carrying symbolic significance, including forget-me-nots and the poppy for death. The setting is the Hogsmill River at Ewell in Surrey, and the model, the red-headed Elizabeth Siddal, famously posed in a bath of water heated by lamps, catching a terrible cold when they went out.



6 Edward Burne-Jones: Laus Veneris (1873-75)
Burne-Jones is the best known among the second generation of painters who were connected with the PRB but who could be better called late romantic or symbolist (post-pre-Raphaelite would be accurate, but sounds ridiculous). A fellow student at Oxford University with William Morris, he owed much to early encouragement from Rossetti and Ruskin, but gradually developed his own style, absorbing Old Master and classical motifs. A sensuous languor and a synaesthesia of art, sex and music pervade Laus Veneris (The Song of Venus), which loosely evokes the German legend of Tannhäuser, filtered through the poetry of Algernon Swinburne (a close friend) as well as the Wagner opera of 1861.


7 William Holman Hunt: The Light of the World (1851-53)
The most earnestly religious member of the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood PRB, Holman Hunt spent two years in the Holy Land from 1854, working on The Scapegoat and The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple. Before he left, he completed this picture and its secular counterpart, The Awakening Conscience. Each combines moral truth with painterly realism, in a way that delighted Ruskin, who wrote letters of praise to the Times. Hunt told a friend that he had painted it "with what I thought to be divine command, and not simply as a good subject". A larger and later version (painted in 1900) hangs in St Paul's Cathedral.



8 Dante Gabriel Rossetti: The Blue Bower (1865)
Of Italian parentage but born in London, Rossetti was the flamboyant driving force behind the PRB, and also a celebrated poet. His early work was mostly in watercolour, concentrating on medieval romantic themes such as the Arthurian legend, and he began painting in oils seriously only in the 1860s. Elizabeth Siddal had been his model, mistress and wife, but after her suicide in 1862 Rossetti turned to the earthier Sarah Cox, better known as Fanny Cornforth. Lacking any specific subject, The Blue Bower is a typical celebration of controlled female sensuality, often matched in his poetry. Passion flowers add to the atmosphere and the symbolism, together with exotic details such as the Indian jewel and Japanese musical instrument.



9 Ford Madox Brown: The Last of England (1852-55)
This famous emigration scene was inspired by the departure for Australia in 1852 of the PRB sculptor Thomas Woolner. A little older than the others, Brown was not a member of the PRB but was intimately associated with them. By eliminating the corners and emphasising the enclosing contours, he provides an almost telescopic focus on the apprehensive couple, whose baby is wrapped in the mother's shawl. The figures were based on Brown and his wife, Emma, along with their children Katty and Oliver. A long-suffering perfectionist, it took Brown three years to complete the picture.


10 Ford Madox Brown: An English Autumn Afternoon, Hampstead (1852-55)
Even with the foreground figures, this is essentially a piece of pure landscape, representing a view over Hampstead Heath towards Highgate. Other PRB painters also succeeded in making an apparently uninspiring view compelling by a devotion to the most precise detail, rather than following the tradition of Constable by re-arranging the subject for pictorial effect. This baffled Ruskin, who liked some meaning in a picture and asked Brown why he had painted "such a very ugly subject". The artist replied, "Because it lay out of a back window."


http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/sep/12/10-best-pre-raphaelite-paintings

New figures reveal Tyneside's booze culture

From today's Chronic.
http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/north-east-news/evening-chronicle-news/2010/09/15/new-figures-reveal-tyneside-s-booze-culture-72703-27272311/

We can discuss this over a few drinks on Friday...

Harold Gould RIP

Harold Gould, Character Actor, Dies at 86

By BRUCE WEBER
September 13, 2010

Harold Gould, a widely recognizable character actor in film and television who specialized, especially late in his career, in playing suave, well-dressed gentlemen in popular sitcoms, died Saturday in Woodland Hills, Calif. He was 86.

The cause was prostate cancer, said Jaime Larkin, a spokeswoman for the Motion Picture and Television Fund. Mr. Gould lived at its retirement community.

Mr. Gould was probably best known for two television roles in which he played dignified, self-possessed and understanding men trying to look out for the women in their lives. In the 1970s, on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and later on its spinoff, “Rhoda,” he played Martin Morgenstern, the father of Rhoda Morgenstern (Valerie Harper), the best friend of Mary Richards (Ms. Moore). It was a role for a charmer; Martin was the patient and consoling parent, a foil for his brassy wife, Ida (Nancy Walker).

A decade and a half or so later, he was a regular guest star on “The Golden Girls” as a sweetly dashing widower who courts, more or less successfully, the sweetly ditzy Rose Nylund (Betty White).

Mr. Gould, who had a Ph.D. in dramatic speech and literature from Cornell, taught acting in college before he became a professional actor. But in spite of his late start, few actors can boast a résumé as long.

Mr. Gould appeared in theater productions on and Off Broadway in New York and in regional theaters around the country, including “King Lear” at the Utah Shakespeare Festival in 1992. He played dozens of character roles in movies, including the dapper grifter Kid Twist in “The Sting” (1973), the Oscar-winning buddy picture that starred Paul Newman and Robert Redford as con men; a Russian count in Woody Allen’s send-up of epic literature, “Love and Death” (1975); and a greedy corporate executive named Engulf in Mel Brooks’s 1976 slapstick comedy, “Silent Movie.”

But Mr. Gould was most of all a fixture on television with a familiar face, with or without what came to be his signature mustache. In the 1960s he appeared on “Dennis the Menace,” “The Donna Reed Show,” “Hazel,” “National Velvet,” “Perry Mason,” “Mister Ed,” “Dr. Kildare,” “The Twilight Zone,” “The Virginian,” “12 O’Clock High,” “The Fugitive,” “Judd for the Defense” and “Hogan’s Heroes,” among other shows. In 1965, he played Marlo Thomas’s father in the pilot episode of “That Girl.” (Lew Parker played the part in the series.)

In the 1970s, in addition to his stints on “Mary Tyler Moore” and “Rhoda,” he was seen on “Cannon,” “Mannix,” “Hawaii Five-O,” “Medical Story,” “Police Story,” “Family,” “Soap” and “The Love Boat.” In a 1972 episode of “Love, American Style” that was the progenitor of the hit series “Happy Days,” he played Howard Cunningham, the Middle American father of the Middle American son played by Ron Howard; in the series the father was played by Tom Bosley.

In the 1980s Mr. Gould appeared on “St. Elsewhere,” “Webster,” “Trapper John, M.D.,” “L.A. Law” and “Night Court”; in the 1990s, on “Dallas,” “Lois and Clark,” “Touched by an Angel” and “Felicity”; and in this century on “The King of Queens,” “Judging Amy” and “Cold Case.”

Harold Vernon Goldstein was born in Schenectady, N.Y., on Dec. 10, 1923. His father worked for the Post Office. Harold served in the Army during World War II, seeing action in France as a mortar gunner. On his return he graduated from New York State College for Teachers (now the State University at Albany) and enrolled in the graduate drama program at Cornell. He taught drama at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in Lynchburg, Va., and the University of California, Riverside.

Mr. Gould is survived by his wife, the former Lea Shampanier, whom he married in 1950; a daughter, Deborah; two sons, Joshua and Lowell; and five grandchildren.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/arts/14gould.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

FRIDAY NIGHT BOY COOL #72

At Ease Part V:

More from the Archives

He's free Captain Peacock. . . .

Kevin McCarthy RIP

Actor Kevin McCarthy of "Body Snatchers" fame dies

Reporting by Will Dunham; Editing by Matthew Jones
Monday, September 13 08:40 am

American actor Kevin McCarthy, who starred as a terror-stricken small-town doctor in the acclaimed 1956 science fiction film "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," died on Saturday at age 96, U.S. media reported.

McCarthy appeared in numerous U.S. stage, film and television productions and was nominated for an Academy Award for the movie version of Arthur Miller's play "Death of a Salesman."

But he earned his most recognition with his memorable performance as a doctor who tries in vain to warn fellow townsfolk about alien "pod people" in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers."

The low-budget film was selected in 2008 by the American Film Institute as one of the top 10 science fiction films of all time and was chosen for inclusion in the U.S. Library of Congress National Film Registry for its importance.

The film, directed by Don Siegel, is considered by many experts as a metaphor for the anti-Communist scares of its era. In the plot, residents of a California town are systematically replaced by emotionless, alien duplicates in bubbling pods.

McCarthy, in the film's best known scene, runs panicked into traffic, shouting warnings: "They're not human" and "You're next."

The film also starred Dana Wynter, King Donovan and Carolyn Jones. He later appeared briefly in the 1978 remake of the film, which starred Donald Sutherland.

McCarthy earned an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor in the role of Biff Loman in the 1951 film version of "Death of a Salesman,." McCarthy appeared in the same role in the 1949 London production of the play.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22/20100913/ten-uk-mccarthy-25cda8e.html

Claude Chabrol RIP

Claude Chabrol
Claude Chabrol, who died on September 12 aged 80, was one of that group of critics-turned-film-makers who revolutionised French cinema in the late Fifties and came to be known as the "new wave".

12 Sep 2010

Their careers developed in different directions, but they were united at the outset in rejecting the hidebound traditions of contemporary French films, with their formulaic, "well-made" scripts, and in calling for a new kind of cinema – realistic, and free of studio constraints and the shackles of the star system.

When Chabrol made his first film, Le Beau Serge, in 1958, using a small inheritance of his first wife's, he put these principles into practice, shooting it in black and white, on location in his home town of Sardent, with the then unknown players Gérard Blain and Jean-Claude Brialy.

The first feature film of the new wave, it was both a critical and commercial success, enabling Chabrol immediately to shoot a second, Les Cousins (1959), and to act as "godfather" to his friends, who were also eager to make their first films.

Chabrol used the profits from Le Beau Serge and Les Cousins to fund Eric Rohmer's Le Signe du Lion (1959) and Philippe de Broca's Les Jeux de l'Amour (1960) and Le Farceur (1961), and to help pay for Jacques Rivette's Paris Nous Appartient (1960). He also acted as "technical adviser" on Jean-Luc Godard's first feature, A Bout de Souffle (1959), but this was a token credit to enable Godard to piggyback into the cinema on Chabrol's shoulders; in practice, Godard was an innovator who needed no technical advice.

Squat, bespectacled and rotund, Chabrol played the joker in the pack, resembling nothing so much as a startled owl. It was an image that did not always redound to his advantage, casting doubt on his seriousness of purpose. He was a bon vivant and something of a gourmet, losing no opportunity in his films for a feast or a banquet. Wags said that they would not recognise a Chabrol film without, at the very least, a good domestic "blow-out".

Though in his work he pilloried the bourgeoisie – its foibles and petty cruelties – he was himself of this class and shared many of its values: property, wealth and domesticity. While two of his marriages failed, he retained a touching faith in the institution itself.

Born in Paris on June 24 1930, the son of a pharmacist, Claude Chabrol grew up at Sardent, 150 miles south of the capital, and always regarded himself more of a country boy than a Parisian. Indeed, his first two films were variants on the theme of the town mouse and the country mouse.

Movie-mad as a boy, he ran a film club from a barn at the age of 12, developing an early taste for thrillers and detective stories. To please his father, he studied Pharmacy at the Sorbonne and was expected to enter the family business. His military service was duly undertaken in the medical corps, where he reached the rank of sergeant.

When he was demobbed, however, he abandoned medicine and sought an independent career related to his first love, cinema. In 1955, aged 25, he landed what should have been a plum job as head of publicity for Twentieth Century-Fox in Paris. It did not work out. By their lights, Chabrol proved "the worst press officer they'd ever seen" and he was fired after a year, taking consolation from the fact that he was succeeded by a worse one, Jean-Luc Godard.

At this time he began to associate with film buffs at the Cinémathèque Française in the Avenue de Messina and at the Ciné-Club des Quartiers Latins, where they chewed the fat and argued over the finer points of film technique. The "gang", all of whom became film-makers in their own right, included Eric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette, Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut.

They were all of a similar mind and began to write regularly for the film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma, founded in 1950 by the critic and theorist André Bazin. Chabrol contributed pieces under his own name and as Charles Eitel and Jean-Yves Goute (the latter incorporating his wife's maiden name). Between them they developed a philosophy of cinema eventually labelled the politique des auteurs, arguing that no film should be judged in isolation but in the context of its director's previous work and of the conventions of its genre.

Impersonal French films of the time were dismissed in favour of what they regarded as the more individual ones of Roberto Rossellini, Carl Dreyer and Fritz Lang and of a whole slate of Hollywood film-makers hitherto barely taken seriously, such as Howard Hawks, Nicholas Ray and Otto Preminger.

Head of the pantheon in their eyes was Alfred Hitchcock, and in 1957 – with Eric Rohmer – Chabrol published a pioneering study that for the first time analysed Hitch's work in the context of his Catholic upbringing. Thrillers that had formerly been admired only as superior entertainments were reinterpreted in terms of such theological concepts as the transference of guilt. It was so persuasively argued that for many years this was regarded as the definitive work on Hitchcock, though never translated into English or updated to reflect the many films he made after 1957. Hitchcock remained a prime influence on Chabrol, many of whose films had themes and plots that could as easily have been filmed by him.

After the initial enthusiasm, Chabrol's critical standing went sharply into reverse, while that of his Cahiers colleagues continued to climb. Through the early and mid-Sixties, he seemed incapable of putting a foot right with critics or the public. Self-indulgent art-house fare such as A Double Tour (1959), Les Bonnes Femmes (1960) and Les Godelureaux (1961) was followed by palpably commercial potboilers with lip-smackingly lurid titles: The Tiger Likes Fresh Blood (1964), Marie-Chantal v Dr Kah and An Orchid for the Tiger (both 1965). These in turn were succeeded by awkward bilingual co-productions with Hollywood stars whose best years were behind them. In 1967, for example, Anthony Perkins appeared in Chabrol's The Champagne Murders and Jean Seberg in La Route de Corinthe, which was belatedly released outside France as Who's Got the Black Box?

Chabrol did himself no favours by seeming to relish this work. "In drivel like the Tiger series," he said, "I really wanted to get the full extent of the drivel. They were drivel so, OK, let's get into it up to our necks." Not surprisingly, questions began to be asked about him – whether he was simply a one-string-fiddle man who had happened to be in the right place at the right time with just enough money to shake up the addled French film industry of 1958 but without the staying power and originality of Truffaut and Godard. Was he, indeed, so very different from the older school of film makers he professed to despise?

It was a premature judgment. In 1968 Chabrol met the producer André Génovès, who gave him a free hand to make the film of his choice. He picked Les Biches, an intense psychological study of a three-way struggle for sexual domination between a bisexual woman, her protégée and the handsome architect who becomes the lover of both. More stylish and disciplined than anything Chabrol had made before, with a fat part for the actress Stéphane Audran, whom he had married in 1962, Les Biches restored his critical reputation and ushered in the most sustained creative phase of his career.

Between 1967 and 1973 he produced a stream of outstanding dramas, many starring his wife, in which he put the bourgeoisie under the microscope, exposing its prejudices and hypocrisies yet defending the strength of family ties. They included La Femme Infidèle and Que la Bête Meure (1969), La Rupture (1970), Just Before Nightfall (1971) and Les Noces Rouges (1973).

Best of all was Le Boucher (1970), about the love between a schoolteacher and the village butcher with a compulsion to murder young women. It had a depth and emotional commitment new in Chabrol's work, prompting Le Figaro, in a moment of unaccustomed hyperbole, to call it the best French film since the Liberation. Many of these films had a thriller structure reminiscent of Hitchcock and macabre touches that would not have been out of place in his work, such as the scene in Le Boucher when a murder is signalled by the victim's blood dripping from an overhanging rock into a schoolgirl's sandwich.

In general, Chabrol avoided what he called "big subjects", preferring little themes to which he could give the big treatment. When he departed from this principle, the results were usually unfortunate, as in Ten Days' Wonder (1972), an Ellery Queen story with Orson Welles and Anthony Perkins that he inflated into a study of comparative religion; and Nada (1974), an ill-considered foray into the field of politics and international terrorism. Of Ten Days' Wonder it was said that he let his belly rule his brain, accepting the assignment only because it could be shot in Alsace, where he was eager to sample the cuisine.

Chabrol never recaptured the consistency of his best years but remained a prolific director, making around 60 films in all. Occasional high spots stood out from the many pedestrian works he undertook merely to keep in practice, among which was a shoddy remake of Fritz Lang's Dr Mabuse called Dr M (1987). It was doubly disappointing in that Chabrol had named Lang, along with two other German directors, Ernst Lubitsch and FW Murnau, as one of the formative influences on his work. He was under no illusions about these films and cheerfully nominated one of them, The Twist (1976), with Ann-Margret and Bruce Dern, as the second-worst film ever made.

Some of his best work in later years was with the actress Isabelle Huppert, whom he first directed in Violette Nozière (1978), the story of a notorious murderess who poisoned her family. For Chabrol she also played the last woman to be guillotined in France (for carrying out abortions) in Une Affaire de Femmes (1988); the title role in a version of Madame Bovary (1991); and the village postmistress with a shady past in La Cérémonie (1995), an adaptation of a Ruth Rendell thriller.

Partially successful, too, was L'Enfer (1994), with Emmanuelle Béart, based on a 30-year-old script that the veteran film-maker Henri-Georges Clouzot had had to abandon when he suffered a heart attack in 1964.

Chabrol was also active in television, for which he made two Henry James short stories in 1973; four episodes of a series called Histoires Insolites in 1974; and, in 1993, an ambitious documentary about occupied France, The Eye of Vichy.

With the beginning of the new century, Chabrol seemed to regain his earlier form, making a number of films which were quite well-received. They included Merci pour le Chocolat (2000); The Bridesmaid (2004); and The Comedy of Power (2006). A Girl Cut in Two (2007) turned on a rich family's attempt to freeze out their son's widow. His last film was Bellamy (2009), with Gerard Depardieu.

He played cameo parts in numerous films, both his own and his friends', beginning with Jacques Rivette's short Le Coup du Berger (1956). His most fully-rounded role was as a parody of himself, opposite his wife, Stéphane Audran, in a 20-minute short, La Muette, that he contributed to the portmanteau picture Six in Paris (1966). They played gluttonous parents whose constant bickering leads to a sticky end when their small daughter plugs her ears against the din and subsequently fails to hear their cries for help.

Chabrol was married three times: to Agnès Goute, Colette Dacheville (the actress Stéphane Audran) and Aurore Pajot. He had four children.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/film-obituaries/7997567/Claude-Chabrol.html

The Man in Black (and White)

Harpo!

Harpo "sandwiched between two questionable looking women," one of whom "bears a striking resemblance to Broderick Crawford."
http://www.harposplace.com/index.php

"Johnny, we hardly knew ye..."

RFK (and JFK)

Harpo Backs JFK for President

THE MANY HATS OF MICHAEL EDWARD LOVE

And a bonus feature: Mike Unplugged (with wailin' sax)!

Silent Movie Star Wars

Harry Nilsson and friends, 1974

Don't Do It

She Loves the Jerk

Flying Cowboys

Crying in the Rain

My Baby's Gone

Old Paint

Jean Giraud/Moebius

Clive Donner RIP

Clive Donner, 1960s-Era Film Director, Dies at 84

By WILLIAM GRIMES
September 9, 2010

Clive Donner, who helped define the British New Wave with films like “The Caretaker” and “Nothing but the Best” and directed the emblematic swinging ’60s film “What’s New Pussycat?,” died on Tuesday in London. He was 84.

His death was confirmed by Gavin Asher, a cousin, who told Reuters that Mr. Donner had had Alzheimer’s for several years.

Mr. Donner broke through as a director in 1963 with a low-budget black-and-white film of Harold Pinter’s play “The Caretaker,” with Alan Bates, Donald Pleasence and Robert Shaw.

Since he couldn’t find traditional backing for the film, a group of well-wishers that included Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Peter Sellers and Noël Coward financed it. The actors waived their salaries, accepting a share of future profits instead.

Superbly acted, with a distinctive look created by the cinematographer Nicolas Roeg, “The Caretaker” established Mr. Donner as a filmmaker to watch.

He delivered on this promise with “Nothing but the Best” (1964), a tart satire with a screenplay by Frederic Raphael. It told the story of an ambitious clerk, played by Mr. Bates, who sets out to scale the class ladder with a little tutoring from an upper-crust scapegrace played by Denholm Elliott. The cinematographer again was Mr. Roeg, working in color this time.

Mr. Donner struck box-office gold with his first Hollywood film, “What’s New Pussycat?” (1965), a naughty slapstick comedy with Peter O’Toole and Sellers thrown among a throng of beauties, among them Capucine, Paula Prentiss, Romy Schneider and Ursula Andress. The script was by Woody Allen, who also appeared in the film but later disavowed it. Audiences, enthralled from the moment Tom Jones began singing the Burt Bacharach-Hal David title song, voted a resounding yes.

“Donner, like Richard Lester, seems to have anticipated the transformation of England from mum to mod,” Andrew Sarris wrote in “The American Cinema” in 1969. “It remains to be seen if the prophet can avoid being swallowed by his own revolution.”

Mr. Donner delivered a dud with the frantic Jack Lemmon-Peter Falk comedy “Luv” (1967), and after the 1960s his career tapered off. His later efforts included the less than memorable “Nude Bomb” (1980) — a spinoff of the television series “Get Smart” — and “Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen” (1981), with Peter Ustinov as the Chinese detective. In the 1980s he directed George C. Scott in two Dickens classics remade for television, “Oliver Twist” and “A Christmas Carol.”

Clive Donner, who is unrelated to the American director Richard Donner, was born in London on Jan. 21, 1926. His father was a concert violinist and his mother ran a dress shop. While attending Kilburn Polytechnic he made a short 8-millimeter film, about a boys’ sports club, and soon after graduating he found work as a cutting-room assistant at Denham Studios.

After military service he returned to Denham and within a few years was hired as a full-fledged editor at Pinewood Studios, where he worked on “Scrooge,” “The Card,” “The Million Pound Note,” “I Am a Camera” and other films.

He directed several low-budget films at Pinewood, including “The Secret Place” (1957), a caper film with David McCallum playing a troubled delinquent, and “Heart of a Child” (1958), a three-handkerchief boy-and-his-dog film. He also directed episodes of the British television series “Danger Man” and “Sir Francis Drake” and a documentary series about India, “Mighty and Mystical,” for Granada Television.

A hint of things to come could be seen in “Some People” (1962). Shot on location in Bristol, England, it tells the story of disaffected teenagers who form a rock group. It captured the pent-up energy of British youth culture, anticipating shock waves just over the horizon.

After “Luv,” Mr. Donner returned to Britain with a coming-of-age film, “Here We Go ’Round the Mulberry Bush” (1968), about a teenage boy’s sexual fantasies, and “Alfred the Great” (1969), a sweeping, big-budget historical drama that pitted David Hemmings, as Alfred, against a savage Viking chieftain, played by Michael York. Critics judged the film to be as bad as it sounds.

Although “Alfred” nearly ended Mr. Donner’s career as a director of feature films, it did yield a dividend. Mr. Donner married its costume designer, Jocelyn Rickards, who died in 2005. He leaves no immediate survivors.

Unable to find work directing films, Mr. Donner made television commercials and directed plays. “Kennedy’s Children,” which opened in a pub theater in Islington, London, in 1974, became a hit that transferred to the West End and Broadway. That same year he directed the film “Vampira,” with David Niven as a somewhat decrepit Count Dracula. (It was released in the United States as “Old Dracula.”)

More successfully, he directed the television film “Rogue Male” (1976), a taut thriller about a British aristocrat, played by Mr. O’Toole, who tries to assassinate Hitler and flees to Dorset, pursued by Gestapo agents. It delighted the critics — The Daily Telegraph of London called it “a super glossy which would have done credit to Pinewood or Ealing in their heyday” — and remained one of Mr. Donner’s favorite films.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/09/arts/television/09donner.html

Tonight's set list

At The Habit, York: -

Birds
Only Love Can Break Your Heart
Blackbird
Too Far Gone
Sugar Mountain
On The Way Home
Long May You Run

Someone asked for After The Goldrush songs so my intended set list was hastily revised. The picker after me played Kristofferson and Cash, but the stars of the night were 3 musicians who were just passing through. They borrowed a guitar and sang original songs in the best 3-part harmony you could wish for. It was like CSN & the Andrews Sisters rolled into one. A magical night.

HMRC Tax Blunder

"We're rolling in it!" laughed taxman Jim McCullough, who wished to remain anonymous.