Steven Soderbergh talks to Terry Gross about making Behind the Candelabra, his new Liberace biopic for HBO:

It’s a very intimate movie. It’s a very emotionally intimate movie and there are scenes between them that are almost uncomfortable in their intimacy and would be if it was a man and a woman involved. … I always felt that if we did our jobs correctly, that halfway through the movie you’d forget that it was Michael and Matt and just feel as though you’re watching a relationship.

Image courtesy of HBO

Hey, Wednesday afternoon, we’re trying.

(Source: pushthemovement)

Ken Tucker reviews the new album from Daft Punk, Random Access Memories:

I freely admit that, until the new Random Access Memories, I wasn’t much of a fan. I could appreciate the craft and imagination that went into creating the French duo’s mixture of electronic genres — techno, house, disco — but the mechanical repetitions and heavily filtered vocals didn’t turn me on in any other way. But now, Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo have come up with an album that exposes the human side of their musical impulses. It’s the equivalent of removing the helmet-masks the pair invariably wears in public performances. Random Access Memories is a collection filled with music that suggests mad romance, heartache and an embrace of the past that’s never merely nostalgic or sentimental.

Image courtesy of Sony Music

Novelist Jennifer Gilmore, whose new book — The Mothers — is based on her own experiences of trying to adopt a baby, talks to Terry Gross about the necessity of ‘selling’ oneself in order to appeal to a birth mother:

Of course, we thought, ‘These babies need homes. And we’re helping these babies have happy homes.’ That didn’t turn out to be the case. There are not as many babies as there are parents who want them. So you realize it is quite competitive. You join a pool of people, and it’s sort of a business out there now, a booming one. And there are more people who want babies than can be satisfied.

So what happens is, whatever route you take, whether you write this profile, you put it online, whether you do it privately, you’re sort of saying, ‘This is who we are as a couple’ or ‘We have this big ranch house’ or ‘We love museums’ or ‘We love soccer, we love children, we have nieces and nephews, and here are pictures of us with children.’ My husband and I made a pact when we started this that we were never going to misrepresent ourselves or lie about who we were. We live in New York; we live in a fourth-floor walk-up, so the rest of the country is confused by that.”

Matched, as we know from the dating world alone, is a coded word. My spouse and I were matched with birthmothers not once, not twice, not three times, but a total of five times. The most horrible things kept happening: Birthmothers and those posing as birthmothers, birthfathers and those posing as birthfathers lied to us. Birthmothers are doing a very selfless and generous thing when they decide they are unable to parent and place their child with wanting parents. It is a decision made out of big, big love for that child. Adoption, when it is successful, is a wonderful thing. But everyone coming to it is grieving in some way. It would be wrong not to acknowledge this.

— from “The Dark, Sad Side of Domestic Adoption” by today’s guest, Jennifer Gilmore. Gilmore’s new novel about a couple trying to adopt, The Mothers, is largely autobiographical.

The Mother Warns the Tornado

I know I’ve already had more than I deserve.
These lungs that rise and fall without effort,
the husband who sets free house lizards,
this red-doored ranch, my mother on the phone,
the fact that I can eat anything—gouda, popcorn,
massaman curry—without worry. Sometimes
I feel like I’ve been overlooked. Checks
and balances, and I wait for the tally to be evened.
But I am a greedy son of a bitch, and there
I know we are kin. Tornado, this is my child.
Tornado, I won’t say I built him, but I am
his shelter. For months I buoyed him
in the ocean, on the highway; on crowded streets
I learned to walk with my elbows out.
And now he is here, and he is new, and he
is a small moon, an open face, a heart.
Tornado, I want more. Nothing is enough.
Nothing ever is. I will heed the warning
protocol, I will cover him with my body, I will
wait with mattress and flashlight,
but know this: If you come down here—
if you splinter your way through our pines,
if you suck the roof off this red-doored ranch,
if you reach out a smoky arm for my child—
I will turn hacksaw. I will turn grenade.
I will invent for you a throat and choke you.
I will find your stupid wicked whirling
head and cut it off. Do not test me.
If you come down here, I will teach you about
greed and hunger. I will slice you into palm-
sized gusts. Then I will feed you to yourself.

-Catherine Pierce in The Kenyon Review.

Good morning. Do you have a face? Do you have a cat? Perhaps you’d like to give yourself a catbeard and take a selfie?

via @MyModernMet

Smithsonian:

In the 1960s, Jerry Uelsmann revolutionized the art of photography by manually blending negatives to produce dreamlike landscapes. “The primary creative gesture for most photographers used to be when they clicked the shutter,” Uelsmann says. “But I realized that the darkroom was a visual research lab where the creative process could continue.” Though we’re now in the era of Photoshop, he continues to forsake digital manipulation, as with the 2006 untitled image made from three photos, one including his wife’s hands. “It is an incredible leap of faith to think maybe this tree could blend into these hands,” Uelsmann says. “But the camera is a license to explore.” Uelsmann’s creations are showcased in a traveling exhibit, “Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop,” at the National Gallery of Art through May 5.

Steven Soderbergh, who directed the new HBO Liberace biopic, Behind the Candelabra, talks to Terry Gross about the significance of the flamboyant performer’s style:

You could make an argument that Liberace really invented the idea of ‘bling.’ mean, nobody was dressing themselves like this. When you look at the people that have followed him — whether it’s Elvis or Elton john or Cher or Madonna or Lady Gaga — you know, all these people are sort of building on something that he began.”

Ray Manzarek, the keyboardist for The Doors, has died.

Here is an interview we did with him in 2006.

Image via Rolling Stone

Mel Brooks tells David Bianculli about the late Madeline Kahn:

I’m in tears thinking about Madeline. And what an incredibly gifted gift from god, Madeline Kahn. The funniest and most talented comedienne I think, including people like Carol Burnett who are great, you know, and Gilda Radner who was magnificent, but nobody — listen to me, David Bianculli — nobody could approach the magnificence and wonder of Madeline Kahn. She was really a great gift to us all. … I saw art [in her], not just funny. But I saw a person who was gifted with art. She’s the only one who actually could have worked in opera as an opera singer, as a coloratura. She was that talented or I think she could have worked as a longshoreman in New Jersey. I don’t think there’s anything that Madeline Kahn couldn’t do.”

GIF of Madeline Kahn in Young Frankenstein (1974) via trixiedelight:

How to Help Oklahoma Tornado Victims.

Summer Cottage, Spain

National Geographic:

This shot was taken in Villa Luisita, a 19th-century house on the outskirts of Cortegana near Huelva in southern Spain. We were spending a few days in the countryside. At the end of the day, the summer light changes continuously and the activities around the house get a different significance every minute.

Mel Brooks tells David Bianculli about turning down the Kennedy Center Honor the first time he was offered it:

I shouldn’t say this … but I’ll say it anyway. I was offered this — the Kennedy Center Honors — maybe a year or two before and I said, ‘Well, I’m going to wait for another president if I’m still alive if you don’t mind.’ I just didn’t feel comfortable when Bush was president to accept the honors. … Had I not gotten 110 awards, you know, I’m an EGOT so I don’t need any more. … The Kennedy Center Honors at the moment, I didn’t need them. … The only award I haven’t received, I think, is Woman of the Year and I don’t know if that’s not in the works just as an honorary Woman of the Year. I may get that too, but I’m not looking for it.

Kevin Whitehead reviews Sarah Vaughan, Divine: The Jazz Albums, 1954-1958:

A lot of jazz singing is about consonants—the percussive attacks the music swings from. With Sarah Vaughan, it’s also about the way she rolls out her vowels, reveling in a held note like Miles Davis. Later her vibrato could get excessive, but in the mid-’50s her taste and control were a marvel. That much is clear from a new anthology of Vaughan on EmArcy, Divine: The Jazz Albums 1954-1958 (Verve Select). (In that period she was made pop albums with strings, and some of the same tunes.) It’s six albums-plus on four CDs, recorded live or in the studio, with bands big and small. All but one session is sparked by another bebop institution, drummer Roy Haynes. He has a springy beat, using brushes, and doesn’t overplay.

Sarah Vaughan had a gallery of vocal timbres, gravelly to silky, round or strident, white-gloved or blues-drenched. Her pitch range was operatic, and her low notes have uncommon power. She drew inspiration from great soloists and gave it right back

Image via vainsmith