The Mary Harron (who has previously directed the great I Shot Andy Warhol) biopic The Notorious Bettie Page was pretty darn good. It wasn't perfect but the performance by Gretchen Mol made it a lot more successful that it probably would've been with anyone else. Through Mol's talented performance you get the feeling that Bettie didn't question why she modeled - she was innocent of the psychology (she was a diagnosed schizophrenic) behind her modeling and the direction it took and non-judgmental - she simply was motivated to do it and believed that it must be her God given talent. Maybe so - and when God told her to stop, she did without hesitation - or so the film depicts but life is really not so pretty and nicely formatted.

The film follows her through a short marriage out of high school to a G. I. and then moving to New York to pursue acting which then led to modeling to pay the bills. Of course it doesn't hurt that she was beautiful and had a naiveté that was almost unbelievable - but yet it was truthful, I think. The film tends to gloss over the more troubling aspects of Page's psychology as you would expect. The truth is seldom as peachy as our idealized concepts.

With no home in Florida, Bettie relocated to California at the invitation of her newly divorced and lonely brother, Jimmie. Foster reports that Bettie was not living with her brother by April of 1979, but instead in a trailer on property owned by an elderly married couple. One day, without warning, she approached the elderly woman and stabbed her. When the husband quickly came to his spouse's defense, she stabbed him as well. The elderly man was able to incapacitate Bettie with a blow to the head; luckily, the wounds inflicted on both husband and wife were non-fatal. Bettie was found mentally incompetent and committed without bail to the Patton State Hospital in Highland, California, but was released in under a year upon recommendation of her doctor. Summary from the book Real Bettie Page: The Truth About the Queen of Pinups

This film was very enjoyable like a pulp novel and Mol's deft performance and a small part by Lili Taylor (who is always great) make this something I don't feel wasted a second of my time. The shots were very stylized and ran the gamut from grainy 16mm to noirish black and white. It also had a great soundtrack with some classic (though less famous) Patsy Cline songs and other Jazz and popular song music from the era.

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This is a short tutorial on how to make a music mix podcast using Winamp.

1. First install Winamp and download/install the SqrSoft ACF Disc Writer plugin
2. Load Winamp and put all of the files in the order you'd like them to play in the playlist window
3. Then click Ctrl+P to get the Preferences window for Winamp
4. Under Plug-ins > Output choose SqrSoft ACF Disc Writer and hit "Configure" to get the box below. This plugin will create a nice fade between tracks and also eliminates silence. Even if you create your own tracks using a microphone you may still find this method useful for mixing your created tracks.
5. The only configuration option I changed from the default was unchecking "Write multiple wave file" which is exactly what we don't want here b/c we want a large, continuous wav file that we're going to convert to MP3 afterwards. You should also set the "Output path".
6. Then play your playlist in Winamp from the beginning - I usually just double-click the first track in the playlist.
7. Your very large wav file will be created very quickly (nice!) and all you have to do now is convert it to MP3 (typically @ 128kbps) using whatever encoder you choose, even Winamp itself.
8. Hit Ctrl+P again and set your Output back to "DirectSound output" so that you can listen to your audio files and not create any more wav files.
9. Check out an example.

Enjoy these rare, classic out-of-print tracks from the vintage period of Bossa Nova Jazz, the 1960's. Most of these tracks are directly from the original LP's.  This will be available by 7 PM EST today.

Resources: Jazz History - Bossa Nova, Building a Jazz Library: Bossa Nova, Brazilian Jazz

Tracklist:

27 tracks, average track length: 2:39
Playlist length: 1 hour 11 minutes 59 seconds

1. Promo (0:07)
2. Tamba Trio - Tamba (2:43)
3. Tenorio Jr. - Fim De Semana Em Eldorado (4:13)
4. Rio 65 Trio - Mau, mau (3:31)
5. Formula 7 - Ponteio (2:43)
6. Ed Lincoln - Atire A Primeira Pedra (2:24)
7. Edison Machado - Se você disser que sim (2:23)
8. Tamba Trio - Mas Que Nada (2:51)
9. Bossa Tres - Sambete No. 4 (1:43)
10. Sergio Mendes - Diagonal (1:30)
11. Dom Salvador Trio - Balanço do Mar Onda Quebra (2:44)
12. Bola Sete - Up The Creek (2:13)
13. Milton Banana - Cidade Vazia (2:47)
14. Bossa Tres - Bottle's (2:48)
15. Quarteto Novo - Síntese (2:37)
16. Vince Guaraldi Trio - Samba De Orpheus (5:42)
17. Milton Trio Banana - Todo Dia É Dia (1:52)
18. Bossa Jazz Trio - Amor de Nós Dois (1:39)
19. Bossa Tres - Silk Stop (1:46)
20. Milton Banana - O Amor e a Rosa (3:17)
21. Bola 7 - Minha Saudade (2:39)
22. Bossa Tres - Bossa Nova Guitar (2:01)
23. Walter Wanderley - Song of the Jet (Samba Do Aviao) (2:38)
24. Milton Banana Trio - Estamos Ai (2:47)
25. Sergio Mendes Trio - Maria Moita (3:30)
26. Rosinha De Valenca, Bud Shank and Joao Donato - Tristeza Em Mim (3:16)
27. Stan Getz - Samba Dees Days (3:35)

Take a look at this incredible site that features all of Bonfá's releases from his 45 year career. It's on a Japanese host but it's in English. Here's my favorite album from his many cool covers.

Although overshadowed by the towering figure of Antonio Carlos Jobim and to a lesser extent by Joao Gilberto, Luiz Bonfa was right there at the birth of bossa nova as well. In fact, at least two of his songs, the haunting "Manha de Carnaval" and equally evocative "Samba de Orpheus," swept the world at least three years before Jobim's songs began to make a global impact, paving the way for the first Brazilian wave. In addition, Bonfa cultivated a delicate, precise classical guitar style, though more attuned to the traditional samba rhythm than the Gilberto/Jobim bossa nova lilt. Born near the bay of Guanabara in Rio — his father was an Italian immigrant — Bonfa took up the guitar at eleven and studied classical guitar with the Uruguayan master Isaias Savio. He began to work Rio's clubs as a singer with the Quitandinha Serenaders, and by 1946, he was appearing on Brazil's Radio Nacional. By 1957, Bonfa was beginning to split his time between New York City and Rio, touring the U.S. with singer Mary Martin, as well as writing and recording Brazilian film scores. The turning point in his career came in 1959 when film director Marcel Camus asked Bonfa to contribute some songs to his film version of the play Orfeo do Carnaval (to be renamed Black Orpheus on the screen). The director originally rejected "Manha de Carnaval" as the film's main theme, but after coming up with what he felt was an inferior second effort, Bonfa fought for his first tune and got his way, and "Manha de Carnaval" became a global pop/jazz/folk standard. In the late '50s and '60s, Bonfa began recording several albums for the American market on EMI Odeon (Capitol), Dot, Atlantic, Cook, Philips, Epic and Verve, and he and his songs appeared prominently on the Jazz Samba Encore album with Jobim and Stan Getz. His songwriting skills were in demand in the most unpredictable places; for example, he wrote the schmaltzy "Almost in Love" for Elvis Presley (included in the forgettable 1968 film Live a Little, Love a Little). Bonfa's profile in America virtually disappeared after the 1960s, although he continued to tour and write, eventually cutting over 50 albums. But he resurfaced in U.S. CD shops after a 15-year gap in 1989 with Non-Stop to Brazil for Chesky, followed by the ravishing The Bonfa Magic in 1991 (released domestically on Milestone) and 1993's Moods on GSP. Also, the original soundtrack for Black Orpheus is available on a Verve CD, a firsthand snapshot of Bonfa and Jobim lighting the fuse for the worldwide Brazilian music explosion. On January 12, 2001, Luiz Bonfa died of cancer in Rio de Janeiro.