The Crimson Wing - A Wonderful Film About Flamingos

A week or so back, our five year old daughter and I were searching through Netflix for a nature documentary to watch when we chanced upon The Crimson Wing: Mystery of the Flamingos.

We started watching and were quickly entranced not just by the flamingos themselves, but by the extraordinary nature of the cinematography and the astonishingly vivid colors of these curious pink birds (scientists still do not know for sure why they often stand on one leg: perhaps to conserve heat in cold water, although they do it in warm water, too) set against the deep pure blues of the water and sky of Tanzania's Lake Natron.

When the film ended - after a beautiful and moving time spent getting to know these birds' lives, much as you do in the widely acclaimed, Oscar-nominated French documentary Winged Migration (a must-see, as is The Crimson Wing) - I noticed that one of the producers was an old friend, Paul Webster, with whom I worked on The War Zone and many other projects.

I emailed Paul, to say how much we had enjoyed the film - but also to ask if any of the colors had been pushed (digitally or otherwise) to enhance the powerful contrasts of pink and blue, so striking were they.

Paul replied that all the colors in the film were real, and that making it - and making trips to Lake Natron - were among the most extraordinary experiences he has had.

The film is a 2008 British-French-American nature documentary from the Walt Disney Studios' nature film label Disneynature, codirected by Matthew Aeberhard and Leander Ward.

It is available (in the US) to stream from Netflix - and it is really worth watching.

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The High Tower Apartments and The Long Goodbye

Photograph by Dwayne Moser. This beautiful apartment complex in Los Angeles is called the Hightower or High Tower Complex (the High Tower name refers to the central elevator, I believe), and was designed in 1935-1936 by architect Carl Kay - and made famous in 1973 by my favorite film, Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye (see Why I Love Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye ). Although Altman used the building as Philip Marlowe's apartment in his somewhat post-modern Long Goodbye (the film plays with references to Old Hollywood and opens and closes with the song, Hooray For Hollywood ), the building has another direct connection to Raymond Chandler. It was apparently the inspiration for Chandler in his book, The High Window (the first Chandler novel I ever read), in which Chandler describes the residence of Philip Marlowe as being on the cliffs above High Tower Drive in a building with a fancy elevator tower. (Thanks to the Society of Architectural Historians Southern...

The Story Behind the Immortal Bass Line of Lou Reed's Walk On The Wild Side (VIDEO)

Of all the tributes to, and stories about, Lou Reed over the past week, this is one of the most fascinating - even though it doesn't directly concern Reed himself, but rather Herbie Flowers , the legendary British bass player who created the immortal bass line that opens Reed's massive solo hit, Walk On The Wild Side. When I first heard Walk On The Wild Side, it seemed the ultimate late night New York song: a transgender story (which apparently radio stations in the 1970s and since didn't even pick up on, despite the line, " Shaved his legs and then he was a she ") featuring characters from Andy Warhol's Factory , which sounded as if it had been recorded at about 1 am in some smoky lowdown basement hangout in the East Village. The video above reveals the immense influence of Herbie Flowers - who had worked with David Bowie , who produced Walk On The Wild Side and the Lou Reed album it came from, Transformer , on Bowie's own classic breakout s...

Timeless

I haven't written on this blog since 2021, soon after Joe Biden became President and the horrors of the OG Thug passed. I'm still here, I'm still enjoying life, but I have to say that this November worries me greatly. The better part of me cannot believe that America will return a criminal insurgent to the White House...but a tiny part of me wonders if such insanity is possible. I no longer have the faith in humanity I once had; I have most of it but the Fetid Pumpkin took the rest. We'll see come November. Do whatever you can to make it not so.

Alexander Stuart

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