January 26

The funniest review in any of Leonard Maltin's movie guides:

The Garbage Pail Kids Movie (1987). Crude live-action kiddie film "inspired" by the popular and controversial bubble-gum cards which feature creatures with names like Greaser Greg and Valerie Vomit. They all live in a garbage pail, where they are destined to be joined by the negative of this movie.

The blog Animalarium offers a tribute to the giraffe:

http://theanimalarium.blogspot.com/2010/01/sunday-safari-tallest-ones.html

The New York Times considers Brian Dennehy's quarter-century of work on the Chicago stage:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/theater/24cncdennehy.html

I remember the first time I saw Dennehy on film, as the bartender in Blake Edwards's "10", and he just glowed. You could tell right away that he was a considerable talent.

The Times also introduces me to the Dutch architectural photographer Iwan Baan. Be sure to click on the slideshow, it's good (and easy to miss -- the Times should make these sidebars more prominent):

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/arts/design/24baan.html

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2010/01/24/arts/20100124-BAAN_index.html

Baan has his own website:

http://www.iwan.com/photo_index.php?category=photography

Over at the Los Angeles Times, here is a blog post on a gallery show of drawings by Ginny Bishton that demonstrate an interesting visual sensibility:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2010/01/art-review-ginny-bishton-at-richard-telles-fine-art.html

The arts blogging at the Los Angeles Times is first-rate in general; I pick up a lot of knowledge from it.

You can see a lot more of Bishton's work at the gallery's website (click on "Images"):

http://www.tellesfineart.com/ginnybishton.html#

Among notables born on this date are children's author Mary Mapes Dodge (Hans Brinker), cartoonist Jules Feiffer, science fiction novelist Philip Jose Farmer, fantasy novelist Jonathan Carroll, conductors Karl Ristenpart and Gustavo Dudamel, cellist Jacqueline du Pre, film directors Roger Vadim and Henry Jaglom, poets Achim von Arnim (Germany) and Francois Coppee (France), Dutch novelist and essayist Menno ter Braak, jazz violinist Stephane Grappelli, comedian Ellen DeGeneres, singer Anita Baker, hockey player Wayne Gretzky, and actors Scott Glenn, David Strathairn, and Paul Newman.

Since there was a lovely illustrated copy of Hans Brinker in my home when I was growing up, it became a favorite book of mine, and I was very taken with its picture of 19th century Holland (the novel was originally published in 1865). Wouldn't you know, Mary Mapes Dodge had never been to Holland when she wrote it -- but she did a lot of research to ensure accuracy, and it certainly feels authentic. Dodge had the kind of pluck she wrote about in her child heroes and heroines; she took up writing to support her family after her lawyer husband committed suicide.