Michelangelo Antonioni retro starts tonight

In what could only be called a synchronous unwinding of film and coincidence the Museum of Fine Arts presents every single film that Michelangelo Antonioni ever made, in the first complete retrospective of his work domestically since his death last month. (Incidentally Antonioni and Ingmar Bergman, film legends both, died on the same day.)




The retro includes his better-known films like Blow Up (The Yardbirds make a cameo here) and The Passenger (its star Jack Nicholson presented Antonioni his honorary Oscar in 1995), but also some rare documentaries, experimental and short films.
The movie that has your humble scribe stoked is Zabriskie Point, Antonioni’s second English language effort and his only pure American film. Supposedly Harrison Ford (the airport field worker) and Don Johnson (even before A Boy and His Dog) pop up in non-speaking roles. There are student riots, Black Panthers, hippie chicks, and up tight businessmen all caught in the turmoil of the late-60s as the action shifts from the big city college campus to the desolation of Death Valley. The soundtrack featuring everyone from Patti Page to The Youngbloods covers the wide span of that era’s music. At one point the action seemingly stops as a desert split-level home explodes in ultra slow motion to the psychedelic screams of Pink Floyd. This explosion sequence goes on for several minutes even as the flames become items of food and consumer products slowly coming apart at the seams. Zabriskie Point unreels September 21 while the entire series plays out starting tonight (Aug 30) to the first week in October.

ELVIS 30 years on

The 30th anniversary of the death of Elvis Presley got a lot of press because the Big E still maintains the kind of popularity he enjoyed throughout his performing career. The only time I ever received hate mail at Public News was when I wrote that Elvis was the king because he had died on the throne. Another American icon, Groucho Marx, died three days after Elvis but his influence, great as it was on comedy, didn't include rock and roll. Of course somebody may yet cover a rocking version of "Lydia the Tattooed Lady" to great effect.

Elvis stories seem to revolve around the porcelain chair. In the recent French film Mon meilleur ami (My Best Friend) the taxi driver character mentions that Elvis' last words were: "I'm going to read in the bathroom." A story I've never been able to shake from my mind was a tale of how Mac Davis broke into the music industry. Davis waited in the bathroom at a recording studio where Elvis was laying down some tracks. When E came in to occupy a stall, Davis, patiently waiting, went into the adjoining stall and slipped a piece of paper along the floor into the next cubicle. On that missive was the music to a song Davis had penned named In the Ghetto. This story is probably not true, especially considering that Davis had written other songs that E recorded before In the Ghetto (Memories for one) but that's the way Peter Gabriel related said tale at the New Music Seminar (a forerunner to SXSW) in the the summer of 1985. As the film proverb goes, when the legend becomes true print the legend. You have to say this for Elvis, and it can't be stated for the majority of musicians who've achieved recorded fame - his hits were as big and profound at the end of his career as at the beginning.