With cacao as my hot chocolate I'm writing about today, where we found that a double feature of gallery exhibits exists here in New York, at the Breuer and the Guggenheim.  First it's good to report that the old Whitney is the Breuer, curated through the Met to keep the Old Whitney Americana alive. (Breuer designed the building in the Bauhaus style?) The Breuer exhibit has solo artist Kerry James Marshall, filling two floors with his own, and his selections from Met, art.  His is the double feature's black exhibit.  At first I thought he depicted Nigerians in American settings but he is choosing black as a skin color shade, while Agnes Martin at the Guggenheim, chose, as her canvas shade, white.
Marshall sets against a black base light reflected outlines of expression and detail, upon a large canvas composition informed by art history.  The work is representational, often realistic, completed majestically, and then, by glitter or paint, scorched and graffiti'ed.  Ms. Martin's designs are more like beautiful handkerchief designs, although I suppose there is no limit to the depth or height of appreciation they offer.
We began the Breuer visit with Diane Arbus, impressing me with her printing.  She so clearly focused on the 400 tri-x grain in the negative as she took the photo twice, first through the camera, and second through the enlarger. Is the work's content soul-less or simply random chance re-defined as perfection?  The photo of two children, "one teasing the other" is the caption, was my highlight.  She also redefines rectangular composition, again because there is a natural order in the universe.  She is a documentarian of her time; the value of her work increasing the more of the past it becomes.  (The photographer takes the picture twice, once in the camera and once in the darkroom.)
The Breuer's top floor was filled with the oddly familiar territory of Paul Klee humor, a humor which continued into the end of his life.
When we visited the Guggenheim, which does resemble a toilet bowl in a spiral flush, I had to go to the bathroom, so we went in.  This is where the gold toilet is currently on display, as well as works by 6 Chinese artists in the offshoot rooms (am I mistaken to see frustration in the actions of a robot gathering an ever seeping away red liquid?  Yes.), with Ms. Martin's art a solo show in the spiral.
Next we met friends at the Central Booking Art Space at 21 Ludlow Street, where the exhibits included books, African explorers (in harm's way) and Ornament, small pieces.

Humans are part of a greater force of nature, and we isolate ourselves from it, because we want to live among each other, our people.   The bigger picture is dangerous.  In addition to, what, garbage pick-up and sewer service? our governing bodies protect us from it.

We're safer living vertically, one box atop another, but "Bulb" returns us to the garden and throws us in as participants, joining the other pollinators, although our controlling husbandry tends toward the clip and clone approach.   "The imposition of our will upon nature's will is part of nature's will."

While the gardeners plan to follow the advice of their brokers to move their bulbs to softer ground, they eat a sleep inducing bulb and fall asleep, tranquilized.  

Keeping dark is HATEFUL a Draft from December 2015

Before there was Quentin Tarrantino's Hateful Eight there was Robert Aldrich's The Dirty Dozen.

As the Hateful Eight went rolling along toward its intermission I thought I saw a shift in genre from John Ford's Stage Coach western to Agatha Christie's locked house mystery, and I was excited by that.

After 12 minutes running around the East 12th Street City Cinema maze during intermission (an architectural mystery of the now and forever Yiddish Theater), I returned to my seat and watched the final chapters unfold, saw the script roll forward by time-shifting back to reveal events from a different perspective.  By the end all I could think of was Ma Grisham in that other Robert Aldrich movie, The Grisholm Gang, and that Walter Goggins looks like Kenneth Anger.

Waking up the next morning I am left with a mixture of dreams of additional scenes for the claustrophobic movie. I'm pretty sure there was no nuclear device detonated in a movie theater by the clown man, whose delivery resembled the tour guide delivery of the death proof aukland visitor (Rose McGowan?  no it's Zoë Bell, I think... I have no memory of why I wrote this paragraph)..

I suggest that the movie could be even more meta by showing the cast arriving at the theater for the opening. And though a movie is fixed in time, perhaps next time it runs Bruce Dern can answer Samuel Jackson by saying, "I don't see anything.  It's you who is visualizing your description.  I'm not following..." falling asleep instead of becoming predictably activated.

Ennio Morricone's score has some low register bassoon that is great.  His other credits include the Mario Caiano horror movie,The Faceless Monster, and a movie called Bugsy, as well as the things he's famous for... .

The Hateful Eight is a carefully assembled chess game.  I imagine I will fragments of it again on cable and will enjoy it more in snippets because it is so artfully plotted and so well acted and so well framed around beautiful characters (such as Ma Grisholm).  Oh, I want to acknowledge Jennifer Jason Leigh's great work in general.  As always I base my blanket statement on having seen her in another movie, Ulu Grosbard's Georgia.

I also want to acknowledge the necessity of using reversal film for images of snow.

Right now I'm trying to resolve the resemblance between the movie and the dreams that followed.   Is the last chapter actually called black man white hell?  And does the sudden narration draw from Mark Madsen's journal?

As the remaining two guys string up Ms. Leigh in the most meaningless hanging ever, while they lie dying, coupled on the bed, I realized the arbitrary nature of the entirety of the prior 7 movies.

Whether it's the third reich or the belle south, or misshapen expressions of love as control, we're activated, but no longer because this movie is the key and the cure.

Now back to long term contributions to cinema... I think, as they may be found in Steven Spielberg's road movie, Duel, we'll find them in the Tarrantino road movie, Death Proof, (particularly in the overhead shot of the rain?  I'm not justifying my suggestion here.... however...)

There is a distinct narrative in Death Proof.  It's divided in two parts.  Some terribly shocking thing happens the first time, we go on the same trail a second time, with some kind of more satisfactory vengeful outcome.

Or in the case of Run Lola Run, we go down the same path several times until we get it right...
Psycho takes us down the path twice.  Follow the path of Janet Leigh for part 2.  Going down the same path twice also happens in Horror Hotel/City of the Dead, and in the Vanishing... I think....
In Death Proof we follow the path of another time with a cleverer group of gearheads, making the advice Serge Gainsborough gives in his song, give up the chick habit, as the credits roll, somehow supported by the denouement.

A Question of Solitude, some back story....

In A Question of Solitude there are verbatim re-enactments.  A nurse (Mortimer?) really did leave a message on my apartment phone, which I promptly returned.  She was asking if I was related to, and could therefore consent to treatment for, Peter Dizozza, my long lost uncle, who was hospitalized in Houston for stress fractures from a sidewalk fall.

My father's youngest brother, a red head who had been named after their own father, my grandfather, Peter Dizozza, was living at the Coach Motel, an SRO near Hobby airport, and he wanted to go home.  Nurse Mortimer did not advise that, however.   She said he was well funded and asked if I would approve extended rehabilitation in a nursing home (where he was to die... he refused to eat so they inserted a stomach tube.)

While I was there visiting him some months later, yes, as in the Q of S script, he asked for "a hamburger, make that two."   By the time of my visit to the nursing home I was writing A Question of Solitude, so when we left him we went to The Gulf Greyhound Park to watch the dog races.   I was accompanied, thank you, Kim, by Kim who did accompany me nto the nursing home.  She stayed for many seconds prior to my uncle turning to her and saying several times, actually, "I want to eat your face."  I suppose you could say he sounded crazy when he said that.  What happened to his records?  Why was he well-funded?  Why had he been on disability all these years?  I think I know why, but no the records were lost..  Only the funding was there.

The departure from Gulf Greyhound Park that ends A Question of Solitude's Act 1, includes the favorite dialogue from the Peter Sellars Casino Royale ("What are your movements for the rest of the evening Mr. Bond?"  "I thought we'd get a late dinner, go back to the hotel and turn in for the night.".. something like that...).  It also depicts my understanding, honestly, of what I determined was the murder of my grandmother at the age of 100 years and 97 days...

Seriously, the undertaker let me examine her body.  There were no bruises, not on the hands or anywhere, except of course the single blow to the left aorta that opened up the cable of blood to the brain, which, when cut, filled the skull and herniated the brain into the brain stem, not a bad way to go in 7 hours.  In her lifetime she had no downtime other than that.

My grandmother within the first 30 minutes of this blow needed an emergency craniotomy... so she's found in her 68-37 Yellowstone Boulevard hall, my mother found her, in a pool of blood, only from that single bruise... if you don't act fast it kills anyone.

Just briefly, at 1PM Tuesday, June 20th, 2005 my grandmother lay on the floor of the first floor hallway leading from steps to the elevator.  She always took the stairs from her second floor apartment.  She and her husband  had lived there since these president apartments were built.  She had to slip back and cut the lower left back of her neck on the edge of a step, then move to the middle of the hallway... and there was no blood from the steps to the place where my mother found her.

Look my mother is dead, too, amazingly going through the same manner of passing because a stroke and an infusion of blood thinner created the same problem in the bruised area from a clot of the aorta leading to the brain.  Yes, the doctors managed to squeeze in a craniotomy procedure at a rather late stage in her treatment, this over the course of 12 days, Monday, February 28th to the morning of Saturday, March 12th, 2011 when she passed away.)

I acknowledge that other examples of the slow coma/death from impact to the back of head are clearly accidents.   A boy sliding into home base, a woman resting from a fall at a ski lodge.... there's a gradual loss of consciousness.   They needed an emergency craniotomy.

So in A Question of Solitude at the Gulf Greyhound Park entrance, after they win big, Jimmie awaits Fremda, who went looking for her daughter.  A valet brings them her Nissan Mazima.  The Valet, one of Blofield's lacky's, clearly strikes James in the lower left back of the neck.  He continues speaking until he falls.. this was rather amazingly performed by Zach Pethoud and Mike Allen Hill.   Mike is definitive in the role of the Young James Bond.

Then a misfiring of Blofield's new heart tempers his exuberance, so he needs to return to his hospital for an emergency transplant..

Act Two opens with the two bond girls (Mortimer and Fremda) performing upon the younger James an emergency craniotomy, using one of those manual crank drills creating the perfect sound of surgery.

The young James Bond is saved, and he has the added benefit of a plug in the back of his head so he can release future pressure therein.  Unfortunately the bond girl, Fremda, holds the key that can open that pressure plug....

So there are three James Bonds in a Question of Solitude, Senior Bond, Uncle James, and Jimmy, because there are three Peter Dizozzas, me, my uncle and my grandfather.

Anything else?  There's a line in an old song, Trailing, "She's sunning at a dog race, where dogs are killed if they catch what makes them run,"

That's true because it's just a mechanical rabbit whipping around the race track.  It's really nothing for the dogs to get excited about and, when they realize that, they let it go by without chasing it.

The artist, Faith Palmer-Persen, took me to a kennel where we met and helped care for (during one afternoon) some of the rescued ones..

So the last line of A Question of Solitude is "No one leaves here without taking home a retired greyhound."
-----------
Jimmy:  Return to Goldeneye!
Fremda:  And guess who is waiting for us there?
J:  Who?
F: Suzie?
J: Who's Suzie?
F: My daughter.
J: Who's been taking care of her?
F: The bachelor next door,
J: Noel Coward?
etc...

George Ferencz, who helped develop this project at La Mama, helped me discover that Ian Fleming wrote less about James Bond, who is, after all, the orithologist who wrote The Wild Birds of Jamaica, than on cataloging species of birds, fish and plants...