Pale Mother

Director Helma Sanders-Brahms reached back into her own wartime childhood for her best known film, Germany Pale Mother (Deutschland bleiche Mutter). The film is based on the life of Sanders-Brahms' mother, fictionalized in the person of Eva Mattes. Ms. Mattes marries Nazi soldier Ernst Jacobi, remaining loyal to her largely absent husband through the fall of Germany and the grim postwar era. The couple has a daughter, for whom the aggressively independent Mattes tries to provide even as those around her starve to death.

Germany 1939. Hans and Lene marry the day before the war breaks out, and Hans is sent to the Eastern front. During a bombing raid their daughter Anna is born. The house is destroyed and Lene and Anna moves in with relatives in Berlin. Hans survives the war but he is not the same person as in 1939, and he and Lene find it difficult to live together again.

Behold a Pale Horse is a 1964 film directed by Fred Zinnemann, based on the novel Killing a Mouse on Sunday by Emeric Pressburger, which itself is loosely based on the life of the Spanish anarchist guerrilla, Francisco Sabaté Llopart. It stars Gregory Peck, Omar Sharif and Anthony Quinn.

A mysterious and possibly otherworldly stranger comes to the rescue of a frontier town in this Western, which was strongly influenced by the George Stevens classic, Shane. The peace of a small mining community is shattered when Coy LaHood (Richard Dysart), the ruthless proprietor of a powerful strip-mining company, arrives in town with his son Josh (Christopher Penn) and a posse of hired guns to drive out the townspeople and take control of the territory. Megan (Sydney Penny), a young girl whose pet was killed in the melee, prays to God for someone to defend the village from the marauders; soon, the Preacher (Clint Eastwood) arrives on a pale horse, and joins forces with Hull Barrett (Michael Moriarty), the unofficial leader of the miners and one of the few who attempts to defend himself, to take a stand against LaHood and his men.

This is a great guitar album that conjures the spirit of 1975-76 rock. In particular, it echoes the sound of Wishbone Ash and The Who. This is what rock music sounded like on the brink of The Sex Pistols and The Clash. And just so you know, I was (sort of) tough guy/security at a Wishbone concert. And that’s pretty cool for an old retired English teacher. More about that later.

Are you in a dark, semi-hopeless mood due to end of the year deadlines, the pressures and conflicts of the holiday season and the decidedly return-of-the-robber-barons state of politics? Oh, we're sorry - are we making it worse? Allow us to suggest there is a light at the end of the tunnel. It is, in fact, a Pale Lights. And what are Pale Lights? Well, as longtime readers of this blog know they are one of the best and criminally under-exposed guitar pop bands in the United States. Purveyors of melodies and lyrics masterfully crafted to last the test of time, the Brooklyn-based band has just released new LP The Stars Seemed Brighter with ten tracks that will make you smile and put a bounce in your step. Worries? What worries?

Tipped by many to become one of the most exciting and unique British guitar bands of the decade off the back of rapturous critical acclaim, Pale | Seas, on the eve of the release of a long-anticipated debut album, simply disappeared. No hiatus announcement, no press release, nothing. For the following three years the band, led by enigmatic frontman Jacob Scott alongside Graham Poole (Lead Guitar), Matthew Bishop (Bass) & Andrew Richardson (Drums), emitted no signal, instead embarking upon a period of prolonged isolation, rejecting the industry and the outside world to hole themselves away inside a medieval abbey in most remote Isle of Wight.