American-Greek photographer.
While well known for his American work, Boston-based photographer Constanine Manos reverted to his heritage in the 1960s, spending several years documenting Greece.
His work, never less than insightful and sensitive, was best shown in the book ‘Greek Portfolio’ (out of print, but used copies crop up):
Manos was born in South Carolina in 1934 and is still going strong.
For the Man in you.
For an index of cooking articles on this blog click here.
The ‘Full English’ denotes the traditional English breakfast, one described in great historical detail, with regional variations, by Wikipedia.
Now that I have found a reliable source for smoked mackerel kippers (thank you, Whole Foods) I serve my son a Full English monthly, though I do drop the baked beans – there’s only so much a Man can take – and Winston is no coffee drinker.
I have so many pleasant memories of the Full English.
When a young lad – I would have been 14 or so at the time – in London, I got a summer job at the Habit Diamond Tooling Company. Their byline was “Make it a Habit” and they cranked out machine tools with diamond abrasives for industrial use. I was paid some $20 weekly – this was in 1965 – and was further provided with 5 Luncheon Vouchers. The face value was some 40 cents and yes, that got you a Full English at the local ‘caff’ with money left for a tip. And yes, it was absolutely delicious. The job was incredible fun and I learned to operate a pantograph, a lathe, a mill and an industrial grinder. The lessons garnered in working class attitudes were invaluable, and the many posters of buxom, undressed women on the walls of the factory harken back to a time when men were Men and women were in the kitchen. Or naked on posters.
British Railways used to serve a Full English on their sleeper trains from London to Scotland and it was absolutely delicious also, the kippers floating in a sea of butter. This was always preceded by a gentle knock on the door from the cabin attendant who woke you with an offering of tea, inviting you to the dining car. Another great tradition recently discontinued in a cost saving measure by a nation in terminal decline. Sad. A Full English on a train hauled by the Flying Scotsman was really something, as I can personally attest. (My eldest sister was an undergraduate at St. Andrew’s in Dundee, hence the Scottish trips. Plus, I love Scotland).
When I vacationed in Scotland before immigrating to the US in 1977, the Full Scottish would add black pudding or haggis. Once when overnighting at a B&B in the western Highlands I expressed dismay to the landlady on noticing how much larger my breakfast was than that of the young woman tourist staying in the same home. “Och no, lad” quoth she “Ye have tae go oot and work”. OK.
Anyway, here’s Winston contemplating his Full English the other day:
iPhone 11 Pro image processed in Focos.
A masterpiece of cinematography.
In his enthralling thriller of 1948 Rope, Alfred Hitchcock used the ‘One Take’ artifice to add spice to a story of two psychopaths who murder a friend for fun. A perfect John Dall leads a cast with Jimmy Stewart and Farley Granger in what purports to be a movie shot in one take. In practice a roll of movie film ran some 12-15 minutes back then and Hitch cleverly changes reels by zooming in on the back of one of the participants, freezes the frame, and inserts a new roll in the camera. It’s pretty seamless and coaxes the actors into stage quality performances as there can be no retakes.
British cinematographer Roger Deakins had no such constraints in the making of the 2019 classic 1917 whose two hour length is also shot in one take. And the result is positively hypnotic. Deakins is no stranger to readers of this journal and for an extensive survey of his work you should go here. After a multi-year Oscar drought – what are those Academy members thinking of? – Roger has now garnered two Oscars in as many years for his camera work, and looking at 1917 it’s hard to see how anything could compete. Here’s to many more Oscars for the master.
Pig enshrined.
A photo is worth 150,000 lives.
Congratulation to Samuel Corum of the The New York Times for this piece of genius.
For Arnold Newman’s take on a mass murderer from an earlier generation, click here.
A giant passes.
It’s no accident that many of the greatest movies made include the credit “Music: Ennio Morricone” and, indeed, one easy way of watching the best of the best is to simply search on that statement.
The Italian master died today, aged 91, further proof that there is no God. Were that the case we would not have scum in #10 and in the Oval Office, and Ennio would still be happily composing.
It’s hard to know where to begin when speaking of his music, a visual style which probably originated with Prokofiev and his story telling “Romeo & Juliet” score. But Ennio was unconstrained by traditional instruments as even a casual listener will hear in his “Man with no name” Eastwood/Leone trilogy of westerns, movies which redefined the Western genre and made a star of Clint Eastwood. The famous theme in “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” is played on an ocarina, and the sound track includes whip cracks and various other artifacts of a western life. Move on to “Once Upon a Time in the West“, the definitive American western, also directed by Sergio Leone, and you have the pan pipe theme which defines the gunman on a mission, Charles Bronson. The comedic offset, Jason Robards, is represented by a honky tonk theme whereas Jill, the whore with a heart of gold, is portrayed in soaring magnificence, never more than when exiting the new railroad station to a rising camera which literally shows how the west was won. It’s called the railroad. Ennio was to repeat the pan pipe theme in the early, childhood section of “Once Upon a Time in America”, again helmed by Leone, a long retelling of the Jewish mob’s rise to prominence in prohibition New York.
And Ennio was not just about expressionist excess. Take a listen to his score for “Cinema Paradiso”, the telling of a young boy’s discovery of the cinema or, better yet, what is probably the master’s greatest composition, the score for “The Mission” which documents in searing detail the fight between Brazilian and Portugese colonists for the heart of the Guarani tribe and establishment of what we now know as Brazil. (The Portugese won, as the native language of the Brazilians discloses).
Watch some Ennio and see what great movie music is about.