The Jewish-Italian artist womanized, drank, and did drugs — and in his 35 years created an impressive oeuvre, now showing in a blockbuster exhibit at Tate Modern
Despite this, Modigliani’s output was considerable and his work is currently the subject of a blockbuster exhibition at Tate Modern, in London.
His major retrospective is the most comprehensive Modigliani exhibition ever held in the United Kingdom. With over 100 works, it brings together a range of his portraits, landscapes, sculptures and 12 of his iconic, languorous, female nudes, some of which have never been shown in the UK before.
These seductive figures, such as “Reclining Nude on a White Cushion” (1917), “Female Nude” (1916) and “Seated Nude” (1916) constitute many of his best-known works today. But in the early 20th century, the provocative paintings proved controversial, shocking the French establishment.
In 1917, they were included in Modigliani’s only solo exhibition in his lifetime, but were subject to censorship on grounds of indecency: A police commissioner objected to Modigliani’s depiction of pubic hair, finding it offensive [ . . . ]
Pecos Pest is the 96th one-reel animated Tom and Jerry short, released in 1955 directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, scored by Scott Bradley and released in theaters on November 11, 1955 by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Pecos Pest was directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. This was the last Tom and Jerry cartoon released to be produced by Fred Quimby before he went into retirement. This was also last Tom and Jerry cartoon produced in Academy format; all subsequent Tom and Jerry cartoons were released in CinemaScope format. The cartoon was animated by Ed Barge, Irven Spence, Ray Patterson, and Kenneth Muse, with backgrounds by Robert Gentle and music by Scott Bradley. It is one of the special episodes featuring a guest appearance with Uncle Pecos and his music were performed (uncredited) by Shug Fisher.
The Plot
Jerry receives a telegram from his Uncle Pecos, saying he is on his way to the big city from Texas for a guitar solo and will be staying with his nephew for the night; Pecos then arrives shortly after. The mustached mouse (who stutters in a fashion similar to Porky Pig) gives Jerry a performance on his guitar, playing his new song, “Crambone” (his version of the song “Frog Went A-Courting”), which he gets through most of until he breaks a guitar string toward the end.
Uncle Pecos asks Jerry if he has a spare guitar string, but Jerry shakes his head in the way of saying no. Pecos looks out the mouse hole and claims he sees another string. He walks up to a sleeping Tom and fearlessly plucks a whisker off the cat’s face and installs it into his guitar, startling Tom awake. As Pecos starts to play a song, a shocked Jerry comes to the rescue and quickly carries his reckless uncle away from Tom back to the mouse hole, accidentally banging his uncle’s head on the wall just above the hole whilst doing so. Just as Tom is about to get them, Jerry drags Pecos into the hole, but Pecos quickly sticks his head out and thanks a confused Tom for his “service”.
Tom then heads to the bathroom to examine his severed whisker in the mirror, but then he hears the sound of Pecos breaking another string. Pecos then appears and plucks another whisker from Tom’s face. An angry Tom seizes Pecos, but Jerry arrives, rescuing his uncle again by squirting a tube of toothpaste into Tom’s face, with the toothpaste forming into a pair of glasses. As Jerry makes a run back to the mouse hole with Pecos, they fall through a floor grate. Tom arrives and listens to Pecos continuing to play his guitar until he breaks another string and claims he needs another whisker. Scared of feeling any more pain due to another whisker being plucked, Tom barricades the grate and flees. He hides next to the basement door, which Pecos throws open on top of him, and calls for the cat while Jerry holds onto his uncle’s tail, trying to stop him.
The force of the impact causes the basement door to break into pieces, revealing a flattened Tom, who immediately runs away as Pecos follows.
Tom slams anything he can find onto Pecos in order to keep him at bay: first a bread bin, then the top half of a Dutch Door shut (without realizing that, because Pecos is a mouse, he can simply walk underneath it), and finally a mop. As if uninterrupted, Pecos keeps coming and tries to reason with the cat that he needs a whisker to fix his guitar and is not going to let a broken string stand in the way of his fame and fortune. As a last resort, Tom jumps out the kitchen window and runs back to the front door before shutting it. He slowly checks through the peep-hole to see if the coast is clear, but Pecos suddenly reaches through and yanks off a whisker.
Pecos installs the whisker, which immediately snaps after he tunes his guitar. Tom frantically runs away to look for another place to hide. Pecos comes searching for him again, and finds him sitting on a chair wearing a knight’s helmet and holding a book and a lit cigar. Tom dumps some cigar ash onto Pecos’s head, but an unfazed Pecos responds by flipping the chair over and removing another whisker. Adamant not to lose the two leftover whiskers, Tom dashes into a nearby closet and slams the door shut. Pecos then invites Jerry to listen to the song he’s going to play for his encore, which he plays at first with no problems. This causes Tom to calm down a little and he steps out of his hiding place. But just as he is liking the music that Pecos is generating, the snap of yet another string is heard, causing Tom to instantaneously gasp and retreat back into the closet.
Determined to get another whisker,
Pecos approaches the closet door, declaring, “You know darn well I can’t leave without a guitar string.” before he proceeds to attack the door with an ax. Tom finally surrenders with a white flag, pulls out his fifth whisker and hands it to Pecos. Later, Pecos announces to Jerry that he has to leave and reminds him to watch his concert the next night. The night comes, and both Jerry (excitedly) and Tom (who now has only one whisker left and is very irritated) are watching his performance on the living room TV.
Pecos starts playing, but midway through, one of the guitar’s strings snaps again. Tom goes up to the TV and laughs hysterically at Peco’s situation, knowing that he has no replacement strings. But in a comical twist, Pecos reaches through the TV screen and yanks out Tom’s last whisker, leaving the feline baffled as Pecos finishes his performance. [ source Wikipedia]
LUMP is a new band that teams up Laura Marling and Tunng’s Mike Lindsay. Their self-titled debut album, LUMP, is due out June 1 via Dead Oceans. Previously they shared a video for its first single, “Curse of the Contemporary” (which was our #2 Song of the Week). Now they have shared the album’s second single, and opening track, the atmospheric slow-burner “Late to the Flight.” A press release says that on the song “Marling evocatively explores the notion of lucid dreaming and the hyper reality of being trapped within a public persona.” Listen to it below, followed by the duo’s upcoming tour dates.
Marling and Lindsay met when Marling supported Neil Young at a London show in June 2016 and they discovered that they were mutual fans of each other’s work. The collaboration grew from there.
A previous press release explained some of things that influenced Marling’s lyrics for LUMP: “Inspired by early-20th-century Surrealism and the absurdist poetry of Edward Lear and Ivor Cutler, she wanted to slice through the apparent emptiness of contemporary life. Her resulting creation is a bizarre but compelling narrative about the commodification of curated public personas, the mundane absurdity of individualism, and the lengths we go to escape our own meaninglessness.”
Marling’s last album, Semper Femina, was released in 2017 via More Alarming Records, which is Marling’s own label via Kobalt Music Recordings.
From the roar of Luftwaffe air raids on London to the industrious hush of the British Museum Reading Room, the BBC’s sound effects archive contains a sonic history of the past century.
Now 16,000 clips are being released free of charge to the public as part of a project aimed at helping dementia patients to reminisce about the past.
The treasure trove of sounds has been compiled by BBC staff since the 1940s as a resource for radio dramas, documentaries and comedy shows.
Some were specially created by the sound effects department, including a clip of four batter puddings being thrown, which is thought to have appeared in The Goon Show.
Others were recorded during historic, never-to-be-repeated moments. These include a 1940 air raid on [ . . . ]
