Friends of the Armchair Traveller

  As you all know, our friend Ken Mogg wrote voluminously about the works of Alfred Hitchcock. Ken's publications included a number of books and many postings for magazines such as "Senses of Cinema" as well as regular items for about 30 years under the name "The MacGuffin". Recently two people from opposite sides of the world have achieved a minor miracle... they have saved our friend Ken Mogg's huge body of posts about Hitchcock from oblivion. To begin with I was contacted by a regular supporter of Ken's from the UK, Brent Reid . Brent wondered if anyone was doing anything to make sure Ken's work could be kept online in any way. I was unable to help him except by connecting him with Alex Freiberg , a close friend of Ken's who had been assisting him with considerable technical support for many years. It turned out that Ken was so unwell he had not renewed his payments for his sites so they had both lapsed a few days before his passing. But B...

  Hello good friends, this is by way of a big thanks to everyone who came to the event and to Bill Mousoulis, Chris Luscri for all their work. I also want to thank Bill for his kind effort to re-sync the film as it was a few frames out on the night, which was made more apparent by the large screen magnification. And a very special thank you to Adrian Martin for his commentary on the film which was wonderful! From my point of view the evening was a huge success, meeting many old friends, some of whom had seen the film way back, and new friends who had not seen it previously. I've been thinking about some issues like our friends who live interstate or overseas who could not see the film, and for those of you who would like to have a personal copy of the restored film at your disposal. Herein lies a problem: like a number of my films this film is with the publisher "Bloomsbury" and I don't want to erode their rights to distribute the film as per the contract.  I simply c...

 

Wondering why we have not heard lately from our friend in Split, I wrote and asked him and then I found out he's been very busy indeed. He sent me a link to some recent postings on his YouTube page and I've meandered through quite a few of those trying to work out what to pass on to our friends at large. My conundrum is this... how to keep up with Darko and his incredible spontaneity and yet not put all our friends into "headspace overload", to coin a phrase from Richard. I've selected three pieces, not to say the are the best or to place any comparative value judgment upon them, merely to show three separate samples which I found interesting. 1.    Caesium  2.    ...blow...  3.   Paradox of Evolution  and that's not all folks: https://www.youtube.com/@DarkoDuilo/videos pt

 RICHARD DIEBENKORN   Richard Diebenkorn  (April 22, 1922 – March 30, 1993) I had never heard of this artist until a couple of days ago when Chris sent me an email concerning some new works which she has discovered since she took up painting watercolours two years ago. Chris's new-found love of painting has led her to enquire into the lives and works of a whole new range of painters she had never heard of previously. So now I get to learn about them from her. Chris's reflections are inserted between each these paintings by Richard Diebenkorn. I'm sure Chris would like to hear your responses to them too. DRIVEWAY 1956 Oil on canvas. The beauty of something so ordinary. Colours and shapes stand out to make me feel like a coming home, or arrival. I like the shade I’m invited into. I like how he’s painted part of it, then gone over it with other colours that let the underneath layer show through. COFFEE 1959 She seems so intriguing. So debonair and smooth. And yet she...