February 26

Mondo 70: A Wild World of Cinema (love the blog name) highlights an obscure World War II flick starring and directed by George Montgomery, The Steel Claw (1961), made either a little late for a contemporary WWII film or a little early for a retro WWII film:

http://mondo70.blogspot.com/2010/02/steel-claw-1961.html

A "lost" Scottish comedy from 1952, Laxdale Hall, has been rediscovered in a clean 16 millimeter print and will be issued on DVD:

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/comedian-rikki-s-film-debut-discovered-1.1008292?localLinksEnabled=false

The nonpareil Armenian film director Sergei Paradjanov is getting a full-scale retrospective in London and Bristol. Hat tip to {feuilleton}:

http://www.paradjanov-festival.co.uk/

http://www.bfi.org.uk/whatson/bfi_southbank/film_programme/march_season/sergei_paradjanov

All eight of Paradjanov's completed narrative features are included.

Blogger Brooks Peters, remembering one of his favorite children's authors, Jerrold Beim, wonders whatever happened to him, and does original biographical research to find out, as well as ruminating on the distinctive and offbeat characteristics of his books. The result is a first-rate post that makes me want to read Beim:

http://www.brookspeters.com/2010/02/whatever-happened-to-jerrold-beim/

Imogen Russell Williams speculates on the role of gruesome violence in children's literature:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/feb/22/violence-children-books-epic

{feuilleton} celebrates the digitization of the beautiful turn of the century German Art Nouveau periodical Jugend:

http://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/2010/02/23/jugend-magazine-revisited/

The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston is putting on an exhibition of the American Impressionist Maurice Prendergast's warmly colorful views of Italy:

http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=36266

http://www.mfah.org/exhibition.asp?par1=8&par2=1&par3=626&par4=1&par5=1&par6=1&par7=&lgc=4&eid=&currentPage=

Photographer Gueorgui Pinkhassov has been documenting the capital city of Baku, Azerbaijan:

http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=36405

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baku

Here is a charming waterside office building in Istanbul:

http://www.archdaily.com/49957/go%CC%88ksu-office-building-nevzat-sayin/

Max Raabe and the Palast Orchester take you back to Jazz Age Berlin (and take some contemporary songs back with them):

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2010/02/music-review-max-raabe-and-the-palast-orchester.html

http://www.palastorchester.de/



Among notables born on this date are philosophers Jeremy Bentham and Claude Helvetius, literary critic I.A. Richards, artist Honore Daumier, baseball pitcher Grover Alexander, animator Tex Avery, composer Frank Bridge, French novelists Victor Hugo and Michel Houellebecq, mystery novelist Elizabeth George, science fiction novelist Theodore Sturgeon, poet George Barker, politician Tim Kaine, country singer Johnny Cash, pop musician Fats Domino, and actors Tony Randall, Dane Clark, Betty Hutton, Margaret Leighton, Bill Duke, William Frawley, Jackie Gleason, Robert Alda, and Madeleine Carroll. The now neglected British poet George Barker (1913-1991) had a decade-long affair with the Canadian poet Elizabeth Smart (1913-1986), and (uniquely?) they both wrote fictional accounts of it: Barker's The Dead Seagull (1950) and Smart's By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept (1945).