#Michael Noonan

[smokygluvs]

Michael Noonan - Fine Gael

Michael Noonan, former Fine Gael finance minister. A bull of a bald man, with piercing, dark eyes.

How comes Ireland gets so many handsome, solid, sensible politicians, whilst here in the UK we are stuck with a stream of thick (i.e. stupid), ugly, incompetent wankers?

Wouldn't say no to that.

Looks good with his specs on as well.

Don't make him angry,,.

[xtrablak674]

Urban Soul Exhibition Opening - September 15th, 2014 at 7:00pm

Back in two-thousand fourteen I was toying with the idea of doing a film. I had approached my high school friend Michael Noonan to assist me on generating a script for this film. I thought Michael had a great aesthetic, wide knowledge base and sense of humor that would be an asset to a script-writing partner. Sadly I was wrong and this film never even got close to being made.

In concert with the idea of the film I had approached a contemporary Ajamu Walker an accomplished fine art painter, to capture some development images for me. The film idea was based in stalking, voyeurism and isolation, and I wanted to get that feeling in pictures to assist Michael and myself in our writing process. Due to the Mr. Walker donating his services for the project I never published any of these images previously.

Its been ten years and both Mr. Noonan and Mr. Walker are no longer friends. Michael and I had a falling out over this very project because I felt like if he couldn't assist he should have said as much, and not let me just keep meeting with him hoping we could produce something. Mr. Walker and I parted friendship for very unclear reasons. I still have the upmost respect for both of these people, but thought before sharing some of these images that I should give some context.

Lastly, this was an actual exhibition opening, where I was coming out as non-binary I had some conflict with Ramona Candy the curator for the show whom is also an accomplished fine art artist specializing in collage.

I don't think she understood how important it was to me to embrace the pronouns I was putting on for this opening and we butted heads around that. She also didn't like that I gave this show my own design treatment which featured my work, which was something I did for all of my exhibitions.

She attempted to leverage the use of the college she was representing to get me to submit to her wishes, it didn't work, I continued to promote the show how I did for all of my exhibitions to date. And generally speaking I will never submit to being bullied. I think this was the last exhibition we worked together on. I don't want to says I was a difficult personality to work with, but I had a clear vision for my work and wanted that vision to respected no matter which kind of show, whether it be a group or a solo one. My art is an extension of me and I would never want myself misrepresented.

Notes about what I am wearing, one of my suits from Born to Tailor, the company I just won a judgement against in court, the shirt I purchased in Peru on my '07 trip there. As a choker I am wearing my grandfather's WWII dog tag and my head-wrap was some unused fabric of my grandmothers. The necklace a piece I copped at another opening was designed by Alicia Piller a brilliant sculptor and fine artist. I love how thin I was and how mis-matched these textures and fabrics were. The look I gave for the artist talk was also outrageous I was really trying to push boundaries in my visual presentation for this show, and I think I understood the assignment perfectly.

[Photo for Brown Estate shot by Ajamu Walker]

[dirjoh-blog]

My interview with Hans Knoop.

I had the privilege today to interview Hans Knoop. Hans Knoop is a Dutch journalist who was best known for the role he played in the unmasking and arrest of the war criminal Pieter Menten.Knoop was born during the Second World War to Jewish parents in hiding. Knoop grew up in Amsterdam. In 1963, Knoop started his journalistic career as a reporter at De Telegraaf. For this newspaper he would…

[365filmsbyauroranocte]

Manhunter (Michael Mann, 1986)

[creepynostalgy]

Manhunter (1986) 35mm scan

[texaschainsawmascara]

Heat (1995)

[theersatzcowboy]

Heaven's Gate (Director's Cut), 1980

An infamously troubled production, butchered by the studio (and subsequently panned on release), this stunning, demythologizing masterpiece about American Western expansion is one of the last vestiges of the auteur-driven filmmaking of the 1970s, posthumously restored to greatness and reevaluated as a lost triumph of American filmmaking.

Director: Michael Cimino

Cinematographer: Vilmos Zsigmond

Production Designer: Tambi Larsen

Starring: Kris Kristofferson, Christopher Walken, John Hurt, Sam Waterston, Brad Dourif, Isabelle Huppert, Jeff Bridges, Joseph Cotten, Mickey Rourke, and Tom Noonan.

[weirdlookindog]

Beast from Haunted Cave (1959)

[metaforadohomeminvisivel]

[thedoctorwhocompanion]

Reviewed: Big Finish’s Doctor Who Lost Stories – Deathworld

Reviewed: Big Finish’s #DoctorWho Lost Stories – Deathworld

We have our first multi-Doctor audio for the Big Finish Lost Stories range, featuring the First (Stephen Noonan), Second (Michael Troughton), and Third (Tim Treloar) Doctors; all originally portrayed onscreen by William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, and Jon Pertwee respectively. Simply titled Deathworld, it revisits the early roots of The Three Doctors with John Dorney adapting the original…

[mariocki]

Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI (Friday the 13th VI: Jason Lives, 1986)

"Darren, we'd better turn around."

"Why?"

"Because I've seen enough horror movies to know any weirdo wearing a mask is never friendly."

[blackramhall]

No. I know that I'm not smarter than you.

Then how did you catch me?

You had disadvantages.

What disadvantages?

You're insane.

Manhunter - Michael Mann (1986)

[erstwhile-punk-guerito]

[danburyshakes]

Watched Manhunter last night and a few things jumped out at me:

It’s so weird to see a film with these characters from before their was a cohesive visual language for the franchise. It’s very Dario Argento, 80′s, Miami vice-ish in its color scheme and set design. And it’s a ton of that mid-80′s Art Deco revival that makes you think that someone has done cocaine off of every surface.

Brian Cox’s Lecter is unrecognizable as lecter. It’s not bad by any stretch of the imagination. He has like three scenes and he eats them up. But his lecter is... kinda greasy, a little bit more flamboyant, and less self possessed. Like when he’s talking with Will Graham from his jail cell and he has his feet propped up on the wall while he’s laying on the bed. It’s less menacing and more deranged, but it’s a choice and it works for this movie.

Tom Noonan just always kinda looked like that. Also his physicality and characterization as Francis Dollarhyde / The Red Dragon was so much more interesting and explosive and menacing than any other actors. I mean Ralph Fiennes’ was more monstrous, but also more cartoony. Noonan’s Dollarhyde is uncomfortably real.

Great actors with great performances all around, but the differences between this movie and the other’s (even including the TV show) feel so jarring that it creates an uncanny valley-esque sense when you watch it.

[anhed-nia]

BLOGTOBER 10/17/2022: WOLFEN

WOLFEN is a fascinating thriller that is unflaggingly compelling in spite of its somewhat clunky social commentary. Its broad indictments of manifest destiny, and of the scourge of capitalism, are easily grasped in comparison with the collection of details and red herrings one has to chew through to get to the heart of this murder mystery about a series of apparent animal attacks plaguing New York City. Political aspirations aside, though, the visually stunning film is as much about the nature of perception as it is about anything else.

Adapted from a Whitley Strieber novel by director Michael Wadleigh (best known for the Oscar-winning documentary WOODSTOCK) and David M. Eyre, Jr., WOLFEN begins with the bizarre murder of an elite business mogul. The police have identified a revolutionary terrorist group as the guilty party, but the unusual killings continue with other, more innocent, less fortunate victims. Captain Dewey Wilson (Albert Finney) realizes that there is more to the story when he discovers that these specific acts of violence could only have been perpetuated by wolves—and further evidence ties these slayings to Eddie Holt (Edward James Olmos), a Native American who claims he can shape-shift into an animal form.

Wilson may be an enforcer for white, capitalist civilization, but he himself is only half-domesticated. He has been retrieved from an early retirement to work this case following an unspecified personal implosion, and his cagey demeanor suggests that whatever traumatized him then isn't done with him yet. When his reluctant partner, criminal psychologist Rebecca Neff (Diane Venora), asks why he became a cop, he replies, "I like to kill. It's a habit I picked up, and it's hard to shake." When she presses him, he first claims that he simply wounded a fellow officer while cleaning his gun; when she asks again if he's really killed before, he replies, "Why don't you ask how many?" We never find out exactly what is haunting Captain Wilson, but the film makes a sharp distinction between the importance of what we are told, versus what we perceive.

Coroner Whittington (Gregory Hines) introduces Wilson and Neff to a zoologist named Ferguson (Tom Noonan), who puts the team onto the idea that the murders most resemble wolf attacks. Ferguson is a classic wolf nerd, which is a whole Type in my personal experience: a usually-male fan of the species who jealously lauds Canis lupus's advanced form of society and perceived nobility, along with their hunting prowess. And, like many wolf nerds, Ferguson has a fetishistic attitude toward Native Americans, onto whom he transposes many of the qualities he so admires in his favorite animal. He seems to accept the notion of shape-shifters, too, as he excitedly declares, "The body is just a physical expression of the soul…reality is just a state of mind!"

In WOLFEN, reality is linked less to accumulated legal evidence, and more to the senses, which are extended in various ways. One of its more fantastical elements is the state of police surveillance, which involves a high tech command center that looks like something out of GHOST IN THE SHELL. In addition to the ability to monitor parts of the city, they are able to monitor the inside of a person, as Neff rakes various terrorist suspects over the coals in a chamber that is alive with finely tuned sensors. "The whole room is a lie detector!" its operator remarks, as he reviews thermographic readouts and voice analyses, looking for signs of stress and deception. These borderline sci-fi touches are unusual in the werewolf genre, which is usually rather earthy. However, the somewhat trippy aesthetic of these scenes is mirrored by the innovative, infrared-like photography (later used in PREDATOR) that represents the roving wolves' first-person point of view.

WOLFEN'S innovative ways of depicting sensory perception are complimented by the vision it offers of New York City, which is rarely accessible for most people. The wolves' hunting ground is the South Bronx, which in 1981 resembled the Berlin of 1945, utterly devastated and abandoned by all but the most desperate survivors. Even if you are aware of the state of such places and how they got that way, Gerry Fisher's extensive photography of this location from above and below is deeply shocking. In contrast, Fisher also gives us a stunning view of prosperous lower Manhattan from the very peak of the Brooklyn Bridge, from which Eddie Holt and other Native construction workers can see how the other half lives.

Late in the film, a battered and beleaguered Wilson wanders into the Wigwam Bar, a dive populated by Eddie's community. There, he hears about the Wolfen, semi-divine shapeshifters that the police cannot hope to defeat. "You've seen them, haven't you?" Eddie says, observing Wilson's fascinated acceptance of this story. The spell is suddenly broken by another man, who remarks dryly, "This is all just Indian jive. We've been watching too many cowboy movies!" Eddie sneers ironically at Wilson as he chimes in, "Don't even think about believing any of this shit. It's the 20th century. We got it all figured out." In this scene, the key point is about what Wilson has seen. His direct, sensory experience is elevated in importance above data, documentation, circumstantial evidence, and cultural prejudices about the nature of reality. Those other, indirect items that make up our perceptions, but that do not belong to us, are a part of how larger forces control the narrative of what happened to the Native population of America, and what still happens to places like the South Bronx.

[curatorofthisdigitalmorass]

Manhunter (1986)