Sunday, December 17, 2017

Movie ads from the 1960s and 70s

In my random rummaging through materials I've collected over the years, I found these movie ads that were cut out from newspapers, old and yellowing now. It was most likely my aunt who cut them out. There doesn't appear to be any real reason why these particular movies were selected, but we certainly don't see these kinds of ads any more.

The Conversation, 1974

Very few American directors had a decade like Francis Ford Coppola did in the 1970s. It began on a high note — winning an Oscar for co-writing the screenplay for 'Patton,' to the enormous success and influence of 'The Godfather' movies, and capping off the decade is the magnificent, epic, delirious 'Apocalypse Now.' Stuffed in the middle of all that was this genius little film, 'The Conversation.' Quietly eerie, almost surreal at times, Gene Hackman plays Harry Caul, a surveillance expert who eventually succumbs to the surrounding paranoia. It has to do with secret recordings, which was the the topic of the day. The film, released in 1974, also stars the late marvelous John Cazale. Coppola competed against himself in the Best Picture category that year, but as we know 'The Godfather Part II' picked up the statuette.



The only film Bruce Lee completed as a director. Released as 'Way of the Dragon' overseas in 1972. Lee died in July 1973, aged 32.


Here's something you definitely don't see any more. An ad for an explicitly pornographic movie in the pages of your local paper (although this is almost certainly from The New York Times), with critics unashamedly weighing in the quality of the work. This is from 1972. The film's star, Marilyn Chambers, died in 2009 at the age of the 56.

Friday, December 15, 2017

New images: Beautiful Block Island


Block Island expresses itself in many different ways; it's not just a sandy beach and a cool blue sea. There are nooks and crannies that seem like a landscape from another place entirely, such as these two horses, quietly enjoying their grazing, in a small open space off Payne Road. (Click on the images to enlarge.)

The sky here looks like it was painted by Maxfield Parrish. Taken toward the end of the day on Dec. 10.


This is a Maxfield Parrish painting: