Tucker talks

Back in 2006 me and three friends spent a weekend in Brussels to see indie chick band Sleater-Kinney perform in concert hall Botanique. It turned out to be one of their last performances, as they split up later that year. I don't remember much of the show, though I do recall getting embarrassingly drunk and ending up at a party in an underground squat. O, Brussels...

Sleater-Kinney main girl Corin Tucker is about to release a second solo album, called Kill My Blues. On that occasion, Pitchfork.com asked her about some of her favorite things. Worth a read.

Read the interview here
Look up Sleater-Kinney on Wikipedia

Anticipating the new JK Rowling

JK Rowling Barbie doll

I firmly disliked Harry Potter and the whole of Hogwarts, back in 2001 when the first Potter movie came out. I firmly disliked Harry Potter and his clichéd universe of magic when I read the first Potter book. And I kept on disliking Harry Potter and all of JK Rowling's other inventions while finishing the second one. But by the time I was halfway the third I was addicted. As Potters world became more complex it occurred to me that the cliches used in the these books are cleverly molded into something new. I became a Potter lover, though not of the movies but only of those smart and funny books. Together with the whodunnits by Agatha Christie, that other highly successful female writer of popular books, JK Rowling's Potter series is my number one comfort read. I need no excuse at all to grab Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (still not fond of the first two books) and start reading the whole series once again.

Yesterday The Guardian published an interview with the reclusive Rowling about her upcoming novel, The Casual Vacancy. No kids' stuff this time, no magic and no good versus evil. Instead, a grown up read. Sceptimists, get ready, and holiday shoppers too. In the interview, Rowling, happier and obviously richer than she's ever been, seems completely at ease with both the prejudice of the critics and the adoration of the masses: 'You know what? The worst that can happen is that everyone says, "Well, that was dreadful, she should have stuck to writing for kids" and I can take that. So, yeah, I'll put it out there, and if everyone says, "Well, that's shockingly bad – back to wizards with you", then obviously I won't be throwing a party. But I will live.'

Read the whole interview here.

Here's to the Belle of the Yukon

Bet you’re wondering who that gorgeous curvy turn of the century brunette is, right there by our motto. Her name was Kathleen Eloise Rockwell (1873-1957), but she became known as Klondike Kate, the Belle of the Yukon. This Kansas born daughter of a railroad man and a waitress went up north in the Alaska gold rush to find fame and fortune as a dance hall girl.

Was she a lady? Hell no. She definitely chose not to be, unless you think dancing in front of a crowd of rowdy miners in a tin foil hat lit with fifty candles is a particularly well bred thing to do. What she lacked in gentility, though, she made up for in coolness, we feel. And by that we don’t mean the tin hat so much as the fact that she made it up to the last frontier all alone, tap dancing along the way to support herself, and prospered in that lonely, harsh territory where life was hard and only the toughest men survived. Tough men who would then melt at the sight of pretty Klondike Kate and shower her with their newfound gold nuggets to show their appreciation when she performed.

Did she break the rules? Hell yeah. She made the most of her post performance dancing-with-the miners-earning-commission-on-drinks duties by getting the men drunk and reselling them their champagne empties, filled with water. Okay, so while that’s an inventive way of making money, it’s not exactly making trouble on behalf of women. But it’s hard to overestimate how groundbreaking (no mining pun intended there) her mere presence in Alaska was. She had flown in the face of convention to get there. Rumour has it she even had to dress as a boy because women weren’t allowed on a boat that rode the Yukon River rapids. Klondike Kate and all the other women adventurous enough to join the gold rush were true sisters doin’ it for themselves.

And while other dance hall girls preferred to forget their colourful past, Klondike Kate remained very proud of her early exploits. She handed out postcards of herself, like this one, for the rest of her life. So this is us helping her keep up that tradition and handing out her postcard to you. Cause we’re proud of her too.

Scorsese for girls

Martin Scorsese built a glittering career out of the portrayal of machismo and male violence in the mean streets of New York City. But in the early seventies he took a short break from that to portray a 35 year old widow as she journeys to self realization across the southern States, bantering with her lippy kid along the way.

Martin Scorsese, feminist filmmaker, who'd have thought it? To be fair, it wasn't really his idea. He was hired by actress Ellen Burstyn. Burstyn felt inspired by the woman's movement, and Alice doesn't live here anymore was a project she really wanted to do. She was the one to suggest the script and the director to Warner bros. A pretty smart move on her part, too, cause her portrayal of Alice won her an Oscar, and it gave us a real and complex woman to watch, one who is the star of her own real and complex story.

Alice has been criticized by feminists at the time for being not feminist enough. The problem being that Alice, in the midst of redefining her life and her relationship with her son, living in a seedy motel and working as a waitress in a hellhole diner in Tucson, at one point sighs that she finds she really can't live without a man. And that she liked having a husband because, even though she was afraid of him, he made her feel like he took care of her. (Even though he didn't, really, she adds.) In the end, because she falls for a Tucson farmer, Alice abandons her original plan of going back to Monterey, the town of her happy childhood, and becoming a singer there. After all, a girl can sing anywhere, she reasons, so she might as well stay in Tucson and make a go of it with that cute farmer.

While it is understandable that the seventies feminists needed their independent women on screen to shake off their traditional roles and follow their own dreams in a more ruthless and radical way than Alice does, it's exactly Alice's ambivalent attitude towards these kind of dilemma's that makes her character still so interesting and believable today. Actually I kind of like her choice. After all (warning, cliche ahead) life is all about compromises, and mainly: aren't we all suckers for the girl getting the guy, especially one who can pull off a beard, and who throws in a nice ranch and a couple of horses. Please check out Alice, she really deserves to be more than 'that one Scorsese movie you have never seen'. And Scorsese-traditionalists, don't worry, you won't be disappointed. Harvey Keitel  is in it too. And he has a knife.

Cool girl Gena Rowlands

Fenomenal actress and muse to husband filmmaker John Cassavetes. Her heart breaking performance in Opening Night could be her most unforgettable one - but this 82 year old lady might just surprise us yet.

Look up Gena Rowlands on Wikipedia

Look up Gena Rowlands on IMDb

Opening Night is out on dvd on the terrific Criterion Collection label