Friday, November 7, 2014

Louise Brooks screens in Toronto in 2015

Louise Brooks screens in Toronto in 2015 at the Toronto Silent Film Festival.


Thursday, November 6, 2014

Comic book character modeled after Louise Brooks

The Comic Book Resources website ran an interview with Denis St. John, creator of the Amelie comic book. And in the interview, the artist was asked:


You mentioned that you wanted Amelia to look like a femme fatale or silent film star, and I kept thinking of Louise Brooks.

Yeah, Louise Brooks or Theda Bara. She starts off the book looking more like a normal person than when it ends. There's a physical and mental transformation that happens when you're around these objects. For some, you become a Nosferatu. Amelia starts the book wearing a hoodie and looking like a person you would interact with in the normal world, and she ends as a vamp.

This homage to Louise Brooks represents one of a number of comic book nods to the actress going all the way back to the 1920s.

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Shirley MacLaine wants to make a film about Louise Brooks

In a recent interview with Shirley MacLaine in the New York Post, the actress was asked:

Anyone you’ve wanted to work with but haven’t?

Marlon [Brando]. I wondered what it would be like to work with someone who put his lines on the wall and the floor and the furniture in front of him. He thought it was more spontaneous. And Marty Scorsese. I really want to do a picture about Louise Brooks, the famous silent movie star. [Scorsese’s] obsessed with sex and death, and that’s what Louise was all about.

"At 80, Shirley MacLaine still talking — and not looking — back" appeared in the New York Post on November 1st.

Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Louise Brooks: For the Hell of It

On Thursday, October 30, the Irish Repertory Theater presented a staged reading of Louise Brooks: For the Hell of It, by Janet Noble. Here are the details.

Thursday, October 30, 2014
3:00 pm at the DR2 Theatre

Louise Brooks: For the Hell of It
 by Janet Noble
Louise Brooks: For The Hell Of It will be read by Quentin Maré* (Rock ‘n’ Roll, The Castle), Howard McGillin*
(Gigi, It’s A Wonderful Life) and Maryann Plunkett* (The Apple Family Plays, A Man For All Seasons )
*courtesy of AEA

Louise Brooks: For The Hell Of It is a ghost play, a cosmic encounter of this legendary silent film star with two men who figured prominently in her life: Jim Tully, the Irish American writer whom she met at the top of her Hollywood career while on location starring in Beggars of Life, the film adaptation of his novel; and James Card who met her much later and influenced her out of a bottle in NYC and up to the Eastman House film archive in Rochester where she was rediscovered and feted internationally by the likes of Henri Langlois at the Cinematheque Francaise and ultimately found a second career writing about cinema.

Janet Noble (Playwright): Janet Noble has enjoyed an adventurous life in the theater. As an actress she worked with repertory companies around the United States and at off-off-Broadway venues in NYC. She appeared as The Moon in The Grand Tarot with Charles Ludlam’s Ridiculous Theatrical Company and in many plays at The Irish Arts Center.  Her one-act plays have been included in The Ensemble Studio Theater’s annual Octoberfests. Her first 2 full-length plays were staged at the IAC: Kiss the Blarney Stone and Away Alone. Away Alone has been produced around the country and at The Peacock in The Abbey Theatre of Dublin. Ultimately, her film version of the play, Gold in the Streets, was produced by Noel Pearson and directed by Liz Gill. She’s had residencies at The Millay Colony for the Arts and Edward Albee’s William Flanagan Foundation for Creative People and was a recipient of a NYS Council on the Arts grant for and with which she wrote a radio play, Squirrel Stew.  She is a member of The Dramatists’ Guild and the Irish American Writers and Artists. Noble was born in Grovers Mill, New Jersey, fabled site of the Martian landing in Orson Wells’s radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds. She was in vitro at the time, while her parents played pinochle at the kitchen table ....and the radio played. She thanks Charlotte and Ciarán and she wishes you all a happy Halloween!
All Readings are FREE, but reservations are requested. Please call 212-727-2737 to RSVP.All readings are at the DR2 Theatre, 103 East 15th Street in Union Square.
 
The 2014-2015 Reading Series is underwritten in part by the members of our Patron's Circle.



Monday, November 3, 2014

Pandora’s Box with live piano accompaniment in London Sunday 9th November

Louise Brooks

Once again the Phoenix welcomes the nationally renowned silent film musical accompanist Stephen Horne to play alongside GW Pabst’s Pandora’s Box (1929), which will be screened on 35mm film.

Pandora’s Box tells the story of Lulu, played by the brilliant Louise Brooks, whose eroticism leaves a trail of lust and rage which brings ruin to herself and her admirers. The film made Brooks a lasting icon of cinema, leading film critic Roger Ebert to eloquently say: ‘she regards us from the screen as if the screen were not there; she casts away the artifice of film and invites us to play with her.’

With projectionists becoming a scarcity and with multiplexes and digital cinema constantly growing, this kind of a cinematic event is a welcome rarity. To book tickets click on the date below:

Sunday 9th November at 1pm
The Phoenix Cinema
52 High Road, East Finchley, London N2 9PJ 

Sunday, November 2, 2014

Add N to X: Do you see Louise Brooks?

From 1999, the cover of a 5 track CD of songs by Add N to X. Do you see Louise Brooks?
Add N to X's four-song Revenge of the Black Regent EP mixes science and fiction into a compact version of their inventive electronic rock. The majestically sinister title track is propelled by a toxic-sounding synth bass and Steven Claydon's unabashedly (or is that bashedly?) rock drumming, over which gooey, synthetic strings and Alison Goldfrapp's operatic super-soprano hover, recalling the diva at the Korova Milk Bar in A Clockwork Orange. The rest of the EP's tracks are similarly moogy and droogy; "Is That Alright FYUZ" adds more pummeling percussion to another piece of Avant Hard's synth fetishism, and "Old Lady Ealing Does Man Experiments" evokes a mad scientist's lab, replete with bubbling test tubes, buzzing electrodes, and robotic minions muttering non sequiturs. Finally, with its slightly eerie groove and cryptic French vocals, "The March of Pure Mathematical Evil That Ends and Results in War" recalls Stereolab, if they used their powers for evil instead of good. The CD is also enhanced with the very necessary addition of the group's hilarious video for "Metal Fingers in My Body," a cartoon depicting a Louise Brooks-esque flapper ordering and using the services of a robot gigolo. As with all of Add N to X's work, Revenge of the Black Regent uses quirky, unpredictable vintage technology to describe -- and celebrate -- the ghosts in the machine. ~ Heather Phares

Saturday, November 1, 2014

Louise Brooks ~ Girlfriend in a Coma

Song ~ "Girlfriend in a Coma" by the Smiths, set to imagery of Louise Brooks. Its hard to resist.

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