Sheer Fantasy Revisited

 

All the boys noticed she was wearing the red cloak with its scarlet hood pulled over her shinning hair. Perhaps, because of this her grandmother gave her the gift of a knife.

The girl loved her grandmother because she was fierce, as fierce as her mother, but courageous enough to live outside the village, in the deep part of the woods in the very midst of everything wild. (Lucy Cavendish)

Author Lucy Cavendish re-wrote 12 fairy tales from the days of old, mixing in the original storyline with her own intriguing imagination. I’m giving the book, “Magickal Faerytales, An Enchanted Collection of Retold Tales” a four and a half star rating, simply based on having read only “Red Riding Hood.”

The artwork by Jasmine Becket-Griffith has upped my rating to a perfect five-stars! My second five star rating, since I entered the blogosphere in 2012.

If your still reading, you’ll see some of Griffith’s amazing artwork. She paints by hand using acrylic paints. From this book alone, I learned Griffith is a world-renowned fantasy artist, and it’s completely understandable. Her official website is www.strangeling.com.

Although “Red Riding Hood” is the only story of Cavendish’s I’ve read thus far, it’s clear to me I’ll be riveted by her poetic prowess in the 11 other stories awaiting to capture my imagination.

She began her journey to grandmother’s house along the dangerous path of needles or the hazardous one of pins, and she was confident. The colors of the forest and the song of the blood red sky cascaded her view toward her grandmother’s house…a great shadow appeared beside her, and inside she shook, remember the knife she reminded herself…

Jasmine Becket-Griffith, 2020

If you’re a reading guru like myself, this book is extremely recommended. I’m not privy to fantasy writing, but Cavendish exposed a creative crevice that is in short supply. Great book.

Becket-Griffith, 2020

Becket-Griffith, 2020

Mark Izzy Schurr   

Sophisticated Slash

 

Traumatized when she was 8-years-old, she slashed the jugular of her father’s neck with a surgical knife and then she was raised in a psychiatric institution and became a certified nurse as an adult, or did she?

This year’s action / adventure movie, “Nurse 3D,” has its doses of graphic violence mixed in with a crazed cocktail of mental anguish and relationship woes.

Actress Paz de la Huerta is the title character, and she lures in a rookie nurse portrayed by Katrina Bowden as part of her sexual and murderous fantasies.

 Huerta is a serial killing nurse who targets married men with children who cheat on their wives.

A small laceration to the femoral artery proves quite fatal to one of the male victims of “Nurse.” The femoral artery is in the upper thigh region, and sexy Huerta has a very persuasive way of getting a very sharp medical instrument near a man’s femoral artery.

Four cc’s of vecuronium is used to paralyze another of her male victims, and before she brutally kills this man, she has a collected calmness in her voice as she speaks of his sexual indiscretions toward his wife.

“Nurse” had featured music that gripped my soul. The song “Kill of the Night” by Gin Wigmore worked perfectly as did the song’s lyrics; ‘I’m gonna get, I wanna taste the way that you bled…’

“Nurse” is on my permanent Halloween movie list now, and it’s a great flick for fans of cleaver gore and twisted sexuality. Three stars easy for “Nurse.”

Mark Izzy Schurr   

Movies I like

Tangible and visual pleasures are a symbolic journey into the forbidden zone, where no subject matter is taboo. Above, 24-year-old Joan Blondell in 1930s, "Office Wife."

 

The complete spectrum of vice seeps into the enthusiastic indulgences of the human soul, and Christian values and blind patriotism were abandoned by the likes of Joan Blondell, James Cagney, Cary Grant, Glenda Farrell, Ginger Rodgers and of course, Jean Harlow. 

Joan Blondell rocking the Betty Boop hair style in 1930s "Office Wife"  

A vast array of vintage movies spawned to the masses between 1930-1934 are officially known as Hollywood Pre-Code films. In 1935, the so-called guardians of censorship joined forces with religious and political zealots and enforced their rules of film making to biblical proportions.

The “Archive Collection, Forbidden Hollywood Volume 8” contains four certified Pre-Code films venturing into the frontiers of free expression and illegal activities luring in its audiences with wanton mischief and hot youth at its wildest, loving and living freely. 

Edward G. Robinson portrays a true gambling addict in 1934s “Dark Hazard.” If your open minded to vintage black and white films and clever dialogue, “Dark Hazard” is well worth a watch.

War Cry was a crowned greyhound racing dog when “Dark Hazard” was released. War Cry even received a picture credit in the movie.

Jim “Buck” Turner (Robinson) bets everything he has on a fast dog and a fast blonde. Luscious Glenda Farrell portrays Valerie, who truly lives and loves.

!934, "Dark Hazard." 

Glenda Farrell, !934, "Hi, Nellie." 

“Dark Hazard” is both well scripted and acted. It’s an entertaining story, complete with the perplexing persistence of delicious desires and devious deeds.  

“Blonde Crazy” was my favorite in this four DVD set. James Cagney and Joan Blondell were featured together seven times in films, and the delightful duo shined in 1931s “Blonde Crazy.”

Cagney and Blondell portray a couple of con artists in “Blonde Crazy.” Fornication and crime was the theme in “Blonde Crazy,” and to this day, the story is solid. Cagney was a smooth talker in this film, and I love the scene when he barges in Blondell’s apartment to talk business.

Joan Blondell, 1931, "Blonde Crazy." 

Blondell

                        Can’t you see I’m taking a bath?

Cagney

                        We’ll move over!

James Cagney, 1931, "Blonde Crazy" 

Cagney, Blondell, 1931, "Blonde Crazy" 

“Blonde Crazy” is a prime example of why Cagney and Blondell were movie icons of film yesteryear.

“Strangers May Kiss” contains rewarding adultery. Believing in love is not foolish, while the tangible touch of a lascivious lady weaved its way into a solid storyline.  

“Hi, Nellie,” released in 1934 is about a hard drinking and truth-seeking journalist forced to write a weekly ‘Lovelorn’ column. Glenda Farrell does a great job in portraying a co-working journalist. Foxy Farrell has some harsh, yet funny words about monogamous relationships, and I dug her style!

Mark Izzy Schurr   

Serenity

The ambient energies of the cosmos laminate desires and filter into our subconsciousness. A sole entity journeying into the spheres of infinity. Enjoy the meek pleasures and the laughing eyes.  

Watch a 1930s movie with tangible wanton desires penetrating the minds of the many, listen to enticing music, and embrace positive energy.

Mark Izzy Schurr  

 

Emotions

 

Stripped of all meaning. In an instant there is no joy and no love, just a dim memory of emotions no longer tangible. Formless terrors penetrate the periphery of everything we perceive. Streaking down a labyrinth of lunacy and into the virulent vibes of the unknown.

Once upon a time, the wretchedness of addiction seized my actions. At last, my heart and mind are together in the now. I have finally bridged the dualism between infinity and oblivion. Always an outsider, even amongst others.   

Furrowing into the craters of imagination as unknown energies tantalize curiosity.

Mark Izzy Schurr

Picture is Schurr Shot with my Sony Cybershot 50 mm zoom camera using manual focus. 

Epic Emotions Weaved Into the Imagination

 

All the gods are dead, and all the faiths dazed, amidst a timeless realm known as the divine.  

He rode the quantum waves over the seas of creation. The thunder of ancient universes dying while other were born a new. He journeys across the universe, to the border land between eternity and oblivion, he is of course, the Silver Surfer. (J.M. DeMatteis, Thomas Doherty, me)

His heart became a cauldron of dark and savage emotions upon the thought of his murdered planet. His lover, and the entire planet of Zenn-Laa was dead, killed by an alien conscientiousness called the Other.

Celestial music of from the universe revived his thirst for life. His hopes and joys gleefully jousted with his pain and sorrows. (J.M. DeMatteis)  

The opposites within us don’t have to tear us apart. We are now entering into an uncharted dimension, complete with all the layers of human consciousness. The Silver Surfer opens the doorways between tangible reality and bathes Earth with the resultant energies of love.

The exquisite ecstasy thrust onto Earth via the power cosmic is much too brief, but none the less fantastic.

Mark Izzy Schurr

Another Modern Moron Book Review

 

“Inhabitants of Hollywood are dedicated to crawling in every pair of pants they can find, and you become egotistical to think you’re the prime par of pants,” Veronica Lake said. 

Veronica Lake’s blend of beauty, her ice cool persona and dry comic style makes her a timeless magnetic screen personality, writer Eddie Muller said in the introduction of “Veronica, The Autobiography of Veronica Lake.”

He was a man, rough within bounds and serious with love making…I preformed whorish rituals, but never felt the whore. I welcomed him over me, in me, his entrance, his throbbing moment of release. We so often achieved a miraculous and stimulus climax, mutual detonation, she said about the man she loved. If you want to know who he was, read the book. Lake initially hooked up with this man in 1961. Lake also said she was his Geisha and proudly served him sex. A Geisha is a Japanese woman trained to entertain men.

The vast array of the human condition was vividly told by Lake in her 1969 autobiography. By the time she was 16-years-old in 1938 she was in Hollywood chasing her dream of stardom. Lake spoke bluntly about the expectations of sex to acquire certain parts in movies. Relates to today’s sex scandals involving Harvey Weinstein and many others.

“Most men view the whole casting interview as a license for sex,” Lake said.

Veronica Lake talked about how women were lured into pornography in the 1930s. Veronica Lake had friends in the 30s who did porn and got paid $50.00 per film session. Lake avoided porn and barely paid her bills.

Hollywood is mostly unglamorous, and too many women get sexually preyed upon, Lake said in her autobiography. Hollywood is synonymous with sex, and producers strike accordingly, Lake said.    

In 1939, Lake appeared in her first comedy short, “The Wrong Room,” starring Leon Errol. Veronica Lake was credited with her real name, Connie Keane, in this Two-Reeler. A Two-Reeler simply means the movie is about 20 minutes long. Movies shot on 35 mm film run about 10 minutes per reel, hence the term ‘Two Reeler for 20-minute shorts.

Lake became an iconic acting beauty in 1941 upon the release of “I Wanted Wings.” Veronica wasn’t the female lead, but her role was very significant, and at 19-years-old, she became a household name to many Americans and the rest of the world.

“I Wanted Wings” took four months to film, and Lake made $75.00 a week during this period. She then made $300 a week for her second movie. By the mid-1940s, she was making $4,500 a week.

“Some critics thought I was a good actress, some didn’t, but everyone knew one thing. Veronica Lake was a star. Paramount knew it, my mom knew it and I knew it,” Lake said.  

I’m not going to detail her life as she did in her book, but there was a lot or sadness and alcohol addiction in her life. Lake pulled no punches when criticizing certain friends or movie stars, and she was even brutally honest about herself, especially when she detailed certain actions when she drank heavily.

Actor, Brian Donlevy couldn’t handle a punch from the much smaller and petite Veronica Lake. In 1942s, “The Glass Key,” the script called for Lake to punch Donlevy in the face which she did. After I hit him in the face rehearsing, his eyes were a glassy haze upon impact, and his face seethed with a barely controlled rage. I pulled my punches after that Lake said.

In the 1960s, Lake’s movie career was practically nonexistent and the man she loved was drinking heavily to maintain a level of detachment from the reality of living, Lake said. I understood, I’d been there myself, I joined him in the escape.

Veronica lake was a single mother with two boys and two girls, and she wasn’t a good parent she said.

“Yes, I contributed mightily to ruining things when I had an honest shot at achieving my professional goals,” Lake said.

Lake died in 1973, and she was only 50-years-old. Alcoholism claimed her life many said. Before she died, she could fly a plane, mix a cocktail and knock you on your ass with a right cross!   

Lake was barely five feet tall, and weighed less then a 100 pounds, and her cascade of blonde hair made her a beacon of sexiness and sass. She was bright and cool in the dark days of World War II, Eddie Muller said.

Mark Izzy Schurr