Columnists
Entries from April 2016
BY RAYMOND BENSON
Peter
Janson-Smith passed away on Friday, April 15, 2016, at the age of 93. He was a
giant in the world of British publishing, a major figure in that arena for
nearly seventy years. Serious James Bond fans will know him as Ian Fleming’s
literary agent, the man who spearheaded the exploitation of Fleming’s 007
novels around the world from 1956 until Peter’s retirement in 2002.
On
a personal level, Peter’s death is a great loss. For me, he was a mentor, a
friend, a teacher, and someone I called my “English dad.†He was instrumental
in the research for my 1984 book, The
James Bond Bedside Companion, and he hired me to write the continuation
James Bond novels in the mid-90s. In short, I owe much of my career to him.
Peter
was born on September 5, 1922, in Navestock, England, which is now overtaken by
the sprawl of greater London, but he spent much of his childhood in Dorset. Peter
went to university in 1941, attending St. Edmond Hall at Oxford, where he
obtained what was then called a Wartime Degree. During the war, Peter served as
a 2nd Lieutenant in the army, becoming the adjutant of an anti-aircraft battery
that was part of the defenses for the city. He ended his military duties as a major.
Upon
his release to civilian life in 1946, Peter signed on as a trainee literary
agent to A. D. Peters. He joined Curtis Brown Ltd. in 1949 as the manager of
the agency’s foreign language department, where he started selling author Eric
Ambler’s translation rights. It was Ambler who encouraged Peter to leave Curtis
Brown and strike out on his own as a literary agent, which he did in 1956.
That
same year, Ian Fleming phoned Janson-Smith on Ambler’s recommendation. Fleming
was unhappy with his foreign sales and hired Peter to act as his agent for the
world, excluding England and the U.S. Beginning in 1960, Peter began handling
Fleming’s British sales and all matters of serialization, including the comic
strips in the Daily Express. In 1964,
after Fleming’s death, Peter was appointed to the board of Glidrose
Publications (the company that oversaw Fleming’s literary business), and later
became Chairman. Glidrose is now called Ian Fleming Publications Ltd.
Besides
supervising the post-Fleming continuation 007 novels by Robert Markham (aka
Kingsley Amis), John Gardner, and myself, as well as the John Pearson and
Christopher Wood offshoot Bond projects in the 70s, Peter worked with a number
of respectable authors, including Richard Holmes, Gavin Maxwell, and even
Anthony Burgess (Peter sold Burgess’ A
Clockwork Orange). Peter was for some years a Family Director of Agatha
Christie Ltd., and responsible for the works of Georgette Heyer. For over
thirty years was the Executive Trustee of the Pooh Properties Trust (i.e.
Winnie the Pooh), the senior treasurer of the Royal Literary Fund, and the
president of the Ian Fleming Foundation.
Peter Janson-Smith was married three times and
had four children. His partner since 1985 was Lili Pohlmann, whom he declared was
the “love of his life.†He will be dearly missed by his family, his publishing colleagues, and his many friends around the globe.
BY MARK CERULLI
After
one hundred years of turning dreams into cinematic reality, Technicolor became
only the second company to be awarded a coveted Star by the Hollywood Chamber
of Commerce.The ceremony took place on March 30.
Although
world famous for bringing color to the movies, especially in iconic films like
Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz, Technicolor has adapted to the
times. It withdrew from 35MM film
processing a number of years ago and is now firmly in the digital era. The company also holds over 40,000 patents
and its technology can be found in flat screens and other consumer
products.
At
the ceremony, attended by actor Edward James Olmos and distinguished
cinematographer and ASC President Richard Crudo, Technicolor’s CEO, Frederic
Rose said the company strives to “bring a soul, a spirit, a feeling to what is
being created.†Since Technicolor is
known as a “Creative Technology Companyâ€, Rose noted that “technology is an
enabler, it’s something that allows a director or cinematographer to stretch
the boundaries and create something that has never been seen before.â€
Fully
70% of current blockbusters and 50% of the recent Super Bowl ads feature visual
effects created by Technicolor through companies like the Mill and MPC in London. Some of their recent triumphs include providing
visual effects for The Revenant and winning an Oscar for sound mixing on
Whiplash. James Bond fans will remember
the rich Technicolor look of many of the classic films and the company has
continued that partnership in the 21st Century by creating striking visual
effects on Skyfall and Spectre as well as sound mixing on both films. (Skyfall’s audio mix won an Oscar for sound
editing.)
After
the star was unveiled, members of the press were escorted to an expansive
conference room where examples of Technicolor’s classic film library
restoration and upscaling (from SDR to
HDR) were being played. Let’s just say a
treated 36 year-old clip looked jaw-droppingly crisp, the colors popping off
the screen. The company is also heavily
involved in next generation technologies like VR. Goggles were available to see demo reels
including an amazing clip of The Martian VR Experience, Sony’s Goosebumps and a
project for Gatorade that makes the viewer feel what it’s like to be a major
league baseball player.
It
was a proud day for the venerable company, but as CEO Frederic Rose promised,
“the next 100 years will be even more exciting.â€
By Todd Garbarini
It is no secret that the earth is in a state
of constant and rapid change. Global
warming, economic impoverishment for a growing number of people who have few
options available to them, the threat of earthquakes in areas of the country
that are long overdue for a massive shaking – all of these are stress factors that
large segments of the population contend with daily.
The Chevron Richmond Refinery in Richmond, CA
was constructed by Standard Oil in 1901 and opened in 1902 (John D.
Rockefeller, who was a founder, chairman and major shareholder of the company,
became the richest man in the world following Standard Oil’s dissolution into
33 smaller companies). The refinery has
had its share of problems over the years, suffering explosions and fires in
1989 and again in 1999. On August 6,
2012, there was an eruption of such intensity that it displaced over 15,000
people living in the surrounding areas, residents who are still suffering the
ill effects of the disaster in the form of everything from respiratory infections
to cancer. It is this catastrophe that
begins Shalini Kantayya’s new documentary Catching
the Sun, a film that echoes a theme that is discussed at length by another
documentary that was recently released, Requiem
for the American Dream, in that the decisions made by a select few often
have vast and negative repercussions for many. Whereas the latter clearly paints a dark picture of the current state of
economic affairs in present-day US of A, the former offers a far more hopeful
view of life.
Catching
the Sun follows two people each representing two
superpowers. Wally Jiang, the president
of WesTech (a Chinese company from Wuxi, China though their website now shows
their China office as being in Shanghai) who believes that renewable energy
(RE) in the form of solar photovoltaic (PV) cells is the wave of the future, is
in a race with the US to become the dominant provider of PV solar panels which
convert sunlight into electric energy. Van Jones (author of The Green
Collar Economy and Rebuild the Dream) is a self-appointed gadfly in the US who dedicates his life’s work to improving
the lot of others through his attempts to get people on board with solar
power. In his view, this form of RE is
not just the answer to reducing the carbon footprint (i.e. pollution), but it’s
an excellent way to educate people, make them feel like productive members of
the community and therefore reduce crime and violence. In essence, give them a job, the prospect of
a decent future and ultimately, hope. Michele McGeoy, the founder of Solar Richmond, echoes his sentiment that
good jobs are an antidote to violence and crime. Paul Mudrow and Hal Aronson are both Solar
Richmond trainees studying to become photovoltaic solar panel installers. They hope that this will be their ticket to
a lucrative future.
Danny Kenny, CEO of Oakland-based Sungevity, points
out that the cost of solar has dropped 80% in last five to seven years. Oakland, unfortunately, is also home to much
abject poverty, and many young African-American males who never thought about
anything outside of their neighborhood, take classes and training on RE. Director Kantayya is obviously fascinated by
her subject, and her film does an admirable job of illustrating not only how
two countries see an opportunity for developing a nascent technology that has
yet to reach its potential, but also educating the audience on solar power in
layman’s terms. In the 1960’s, the race
to the moon by that decade’s end put the US and the then-Soviet Union (now
Russia) in a duke-it-out race wherein the US prevailed, due Americans’ resolve
to kick its nemesis’s bol'shaya
yagodichnaya myshtsa..
As of the writing of this review, China
reports that they have developed a way to make solar panels that convert not
only sunlight into energy, but raindrops into energy when it rains. This is a huge development as current solar
panels do not respond to anything other than sunlight.
Hopefully, the documentary will shed more
light on this fascinating subject (no pun intended).
Click here to
read more about Catching the Sun,
find screenings at nearby theaters, and also rent or download it on Vimeo.
“A UNIQUE SIX-GUN
MISFIREâ€
By Raymond Benson
Robert
Altman in the 1970s was a force to be reckoned with. Mostly his work displayed
unconventional experimentation with form, narrative, and especially sound—and
too often his stylistic choices failed to connect with a large, general
audience. The iconoclastic director made some truly great pictures (M*A*S*H, Nashville) and some eccentrically inventive ones (Brewster McCloud, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, The
Long Goodbye, 3 Women, A Wedding). He was often hit-or-miss, and
certainly more on the miss side when he got into the 1980s. The 90s found
Altman back on stable footing with a couple of additional brilliant films (The Player, Short Cuts), and more misses.
I
was, and still am, a Robert Altman fan. I “got†what he was trying to do in his
ensemble pictures—the ones featuring a large cast and a loose, improvisational
storyline. However, in 1976, when Buffalo
Bill and the Indians was released, I was not impressed. I remember
intensely disliking the picture, especially after Nashville had been my favorite film of the previous year. I wrote
off Buffalo Bill as one of Altman’s
misses, and I never saw it again over the next forty years.
Having
now viewed Kino Lorber’s new Blu-ray release, I feel as if I’ve just seen a
completely different movie from what I remembered. Granted, Buffalo Bill is still not one of the
director’s classics—it assuredly belongs in the “miss†category (or rather, in
this case, a “misfireâ€)—but it is much more fascinating and entertaining than
it was for me in 1976.
“Inspiredâ€
by Arthur Kopit’s Broadway play Indians,
the film attempts to be a revisionist satire on show business, myths and
legends, and the Wild West itself. The opening titles proclaim it as “Robert
Altman’s Absolutely Unique and Heroic Enterprise of Inimitable Lustre!†Set in
the 1880s, Buffalo Bill focuses on
William F. Cody himself (wonderfully played by Paul Newman) and his “Wild West
(Show)†that toured the country and Europe, “re-enacting†famous Indian battles
and other historical events in front of an audience. It was the “Medieval
Times†of its day. The entire movie takes place at the arena where the company
performs.
Cody,
aka Buffalo Bill, was a man whose exploits were turned into myths by
journalist/writer Ned Buntline (played in the film by Burt Lancaster), and he
has come to believe them. Egocentric to the nth degree, Cody rewrites history for
the benefit of showmanship. Newman is often hilarious in the role, but he gives
the character a disturbing layer of madness. His entire team—his producer (Joel
Grey), his nephew (Harvey Keitel), his publicist (Kevin McCarthy), and others
in the troop— treats him like royalty, and Cody won’t have it any other way.
But
things change when none other than Sitting Bull (Frank Kaquitts) is hired to be
a performer. The fearsome Sioux chief (who really did perform in Buffalo Bill’s
actual Wild West show for a few months) turns out to be a small, silent man who
speaks through his large, imposing interpreter (Will Sampson). Sitting Bull
eventually causes Cody to face the hard truths of his “lies.†By his insistence
on recreating history as it actually happened, Sitting Bull symbolizes the
plight of the Native Americans at the hands of the white conquerors.
Heady
stuff for a movie released in America’s bicentennial year.
The
performances are top notch, especially those of Newman, Grey, and Geraldine
Chaplin as Annie Oakley. (There are also fine cameos by Altman regulars Shelley
Duvall, Pat McCormick, John Considine, and Allan Nicholls.) The picture elicits
quite a few laughs throughout, and the overall look and feel of the piece is
dead on. What doesn’t work is the haphazard structure, the Ned Buntline
interludes, and the bizarre finale in which Sitting Bull comes back from the
dead to haunt Cody. It’s an acquired taste, something I apparently didn’t
achieve back in 1976 when I first saw the picture. I like to think I’m older
and wiser now, and therefore today the movie made more sense.
The
Kino Lorber Blu-ray looks all right, very colorful, if not pristinely restored.
The extras include a not-quite five minute behind-the-scenes featurette, the
teaser trailer, and the theatrical trailer.
The
new release is a purchase for Robert Altman and/or Paul Newman fans, and, if
you’re like me, someone who hasn’t seen the film since its original release. It
might be time to give Buffalo Bill and
the Indians a revisit.
CLICK HERE TO ORDER FROM AMAZON
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