Vitro Nasu

(See an emotional scene from Autumn Sonata here)
Ingrid Bergman complained about this piece of music..

“Why are you such a bore when you write, Ingmar? Otherwise you can be really funny.” She listened to
the Chopin prelude, which was to be a culmination of the first act of the film. “God in heaven, is that dull bit of
music to be played twice? Ingmar, you’re crazy. The audience will fall asleep. You might at least have chosen something beautiful and a little shorter. That bit’s so tedous, it makes me yawn my head off.” (Magic Lantern page 183)
Ingrid and Ingmar fought and made up and in the end Ingrid gave in. By this time her cancer was progressing “she faced her illness with anger and impatience. She was extremely disciplined in the studio” Ingmar wrote. (Magic Lantern 185)

Autumn Sonata trailer
Watch this documentary – on her birthday.. Ingrid Bergman was born on Aug 29, 1915 and died on her birthday Aug 29, 1982.
Ingrid Bergman on youtube (her story narrated by her two daughters Pier and Isabella) Ingrid’s mother died when she was three and her father who was photographer died when she was a teenager.

Happy birthday Elliot Gould – August 29, 1938
Gould and David Carradine are the only Hollywood actors to appear in Ingmar Bergman film.

Elliot Gould loves it and Ingmar Bergman hated the Touch. (The Playlist)

Ingrmar Bergman on Touch (youtube)

(Elliott Gould and Bibi Andersson)
The Touch – Ingmar Bergman’s Misunderstood Masterwork

Ikea
(Photos Fung Lin Hall)

Photos taken from Ikea – (Founder has a Nazi past)

Childhood adventure
Fifty centimeters deep –
Witch, lion, Aspelund

POETRY FOR THE FURNITURE OF MELANCHOLY (Hikea blog)

Follow the bouncing ball – Hurricane Irene sight gag
Sight Gags” is our weekly nod to the ironic, satiric, parodic, and carnivalesque performances that are an important part of a vibrant democratic public culture. These “gags” may not always be funny or represent a familiar point of view, but they attempt to cut through the lies, hypocrisy, shamelessness, stupidity, complacency, and other vices of democratic life.
via No Caption Needed

Happy birthday David Fincher! (Fight Club + Social Network merged here thanks to Teshigahara and Abe Kobo)

A Conversation With Sophie Fiennes (OVER YOUR CITIES GRASS WILL GROW)

The film came about because I had met him on a few occasions through shows; his gallery knew that I liked his work. The gallery and he called me, somewhat spontaneously, saying “Come down to Barjac.” The gallery then called me back and said “He’s leaving Barjac… it’s an amazing moment and it is an extraordinary place. Why don’t you just come and see it?” So, it was a very loose invitation and when I got there I saw this extraordinary place. The filmmaker in me was completely challenged and there were so many possibilities somehow. I had to make a film there.

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Anselm Kiefer and Sophie Fiennes

Her mother’s death galvanised Sophie Fiennes, and now she has produced a brilliant documentary about the artist Anselm Kiefer .. (Times on Line UK)
Sophie is the sister of the movie star Ralph Fiennes.

One more from Time Regained (Cinema Poetry – youtube)

R.I.P. Raúl Ruiz 1941-2011

Raoul Ruiz, a highly regarded director of more than 100 films in several different languages, has died at the age of 70.
His films, philosophical yet playful, often deal with the nature of truth and perception while utilizing the notions of parallel realities and identities; few were as willing to toy with the viewer on such a consistent basis.

(repost)

One of his most ambitious projects was Mistérios de Lisboa (Mysteries of Lisbon, 2010), based on the episodic novel by the 19th-century Portuguese writer Camilo Castelo Branco. The turning and twisting narrative of this four-and-a-half-hour film stretches through three generations and as many countries, all controlled by Ruiz’s flowing digital camerawork. (Obit: Guardian)

Mysteries of Lisbon trailer

Exiles #1 <> <> Exles #2 <> <> Exilees #3 <> <> Exiles #4 <> <> Exiles #5

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A.O. Scott on Mild Mannered Maniac –

The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting

Few weeks ago I saw two enigmatic films by R. Luiz – Ce-Jour La.. and Comedy of Innocence.

But if I had to pick one anecdote (among so many) that best characterised the warmth and genuinely democratic, open spirit of Raúl, it would be from his International Rotterdam Film Festival retrospective of 2004, when I was standing next to him in a crowded foyer. Suddenly, he spotted and waved to a distant guy; they approached each other, warmly embraced, briefly chatted and parted ways in the throng. Who was he (I asked), an actor, a producer from one of his films? No: “He projected my films here in Rotterdam twenty years ago”. For Raúl, a good projectionist was just as important, just as valuable as anyone who contributed to his work, no less than a Malkovich or a Deneuve, a Jorge Arriagada (composer) or a Sacha Vierney (cinematographer). What a memory he had – and what a profoundly ethical sense, right where it most matters, in everyday life, and in the lived history of that everyday. Adrian Martin via girish

Happy birthday Li Young Lee August 19, 1957

Li-Young Lee was born in Djakarta, Indonesia in 1957 to Chinese political exiles. Both of Lee’s parents came from powerful Chinese families: Lee’s great grandfather was the first president of the Republic of China, and Lee’s father had been the personal physician to Mao Tse-tsung. In Indonesia, Dr. Lee helped found Gamaliel University. Anti-Chinese sentiment began to foment in Indonesia, however, and Lee’s father was arrested and held as a political prisoner for a year. After his release, the Lee family fled through Hong Kong, Macau, and Japan, arriving in the United States in 1964. Lee and his parents moved from Seattle to Pennsylvania, where Dr. Lee attended seminary and eventually became a Presbyterian minister in the small community of Vandergrift. Though his father read to him frequently as a child, Lee did not begin to seriously write poems until a student at the University of Pittsburgh, where he studied with Gerald Stern.

(repost)
Happy birthday Gustavo Santaolalla 19 August 1951 is an Argentine musician, film composer and producer. He has won two Academy Awards for Best Original Score in two consecutive years, for Brokeback Mountain in 2005 and Babel in 2006. (He composed the soundtracks for North Country, Amores Perros, 21 Grams and Motorcycle Diaries)

Picking Berries from “Into the Wild” – directed by Sean Penn.

The Wings from Brokeback Mountain

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(Photo by Fung Lin Hall)

August 19 birthday
Arthur Waley

Frank McCourt

Wim and Pina

Happy birthday Wim Wenders!

What I saw there, moved me deeply.
I troubled me, amazed me, but most of all: it concerned me.
What I had thought impossible – in the context of dance –
had happened!
This spoke to me in a very powerful way.

When the piece was over,
– it only lasted 40 minutes,
but it felt like I had visited a whole universe –
I realized that this (unknown) woman Pina Bausch
had shown me more about men and women
then the entire history of cinema had.
And all that without a word,
with nothing but movement, body language and dancing.
I might be exaggerating a bit,
and the history of cinema has a lot to offer
about the relations between men and women,
but that’s how it felt: mind-blowing.

Wim Wenders speaks about her death (Youtube)

A film documentary and tribute about Cazale, titled I Knew It Was You, was an entry at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and featured interviews with Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, Robert De Niro, Gene Hackman, Richard Dreyfuss, Francis Ford Coppola, and Sidney Lumet.

John Cazele Aug 12, 1935

In his final film, The Deer Hunter, he chose to continue acting despite being diagnosed with terminal bone cancer, and died in New York City on March 12, 1978, shortly after completing his role. He was 42.
Cazale was characterized as “an amazing intellect, an extraordinary person and a fine, dedicated artist” by Joseph Papp.

During his six-year film career he appeared in five films, each of which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture: The Godfather, The Conversation, The Godfather Part II, Dog Day Afternoon and The Deer Hunter.

John Meryl Streep

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Claude Laydu French actor Known for the Bresson role dies at 84.

Mr. Laydu fasted to achieve the thinness required for the role. “Claude Laydu as the tortured young priest gives such a sense of general suffering that he is literally painful to watch,” Bosley Crowther wrote in The New York Times.

Mr. Laydu, unlike many of the untrained actors whom Bresson used, continued acting after appearing in “Diary of a Country Priest.”

Update: Nicole Ladmiral who was great in the Diaray of a Country Priest, died at 28 by throwing herself deliberately beneath a subway train in the Paris Metro. (1958)

Heroine Wake a ‘role model for courage’

“They could not catch her,” he said.
“Whenever somebody dobbed her in, they would go there and she would be gone. Nancy would get away from them.
“The world offered a reward for anyone who could catch The White Mouse. They grabbed her husband, Henri, and the Gestapo tortured him to death.”

Nancy Wake

Farewell to Nancy Wake, the mouse who ran rings around the Nazis
The WW2 resistance heroine, who has died aged 98, was ‘a force of nature’ who topped the Gestapo’s most-wanted list

Charlotte Gray

The story is thought to be based on the exploits of Nancy Wake, codenamed the white mouse, a member of the resistance in war time France and Pearl Cornioley, a British secret service agent.

Lee Miller (repost) by Man Ray
Lives of Lee Miller –

Lee Miller taking a bath in Hitler’s bathroom.

Portrait of Max Ernst by Lee Miller

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“Tous les matins du monde” swept the 1992 Cesar Awards, winning best film, director, cinematography (Yves Angelo), supporting actress (Anne Brochet), music (Jordi Savall), costume design (Corinne Jorry) and sound.

Alain Corneau, film director: born Meung-sur-Loire, France 7 August 1943; died Paris 30 August 2010.

The French director Alain Corneau made 16 films in a variety of genres, from Série Noire, the bleak, sordid 1979 drama that featured a compelling performance by Patrick Dewaere as a door to door salesman looking for redemption in the wrong places, to Crime D’Amour [Love Crime], the psychological thriller starring Kristin Scott Thomas and Ludivine Sagnier, which opened in French cinemas to critical acclaim a fortnight before his death from lung cancer. “He was a cinema great,” Scott Thomas said, “an absolutely adorable, funny and sharp-witted man.” (Independent UK)

ALL THE MORNINGS OF THE WORLD, (AKA TOUS LES MATINS DU MONDE), Jean-Pierre Marielle, Caroline Sihol, 1991, (c)October Films

Alain Corneau

See his filmography at MUBI

“I was lucky to be able to bring to fruition unlikely projects that were close to my heart like ‘Nocturne Indien’ or ‘Tous Les Matins Du Monde’, which fulfilled my wish to make a film about Baroque music, some of my other films could have been better, but I avoid watching them.” Alan Corneau (Mubi)

Originally a musician, he worked with Costa-Gavras as an assistant, which was also his first opportunity to work with actor Yves Montand, with whom he would collaborate three times later in his career, including Police Python 357 (1976) and La Menace (1977).

<> <> Fear and Trembling

Guardian obit
Corneau is survived by Nadine and the two children of Marie Trintignant whom the couple had adopted.

Alain Corneau’s contribution to the project Lumiere and Company.

Based on a story by Tabucchi – Nocturne Indian

Robert Mitchum in another clip talks about David Lean, that he suffered, that he was shy, and that it was very refreshing to work with him. Mitchum considers Ryan’s Daughter to be Lean’s finest film.
See Ryan’s Daughter here (very underrated film where Robert Mitchum played against his type)

Jim Jarmusch on working with Robert Mitchum (Dead Man)

(via)

Robert Mitchum August 6 1917

Hunter Thompson loved the Thunder Road (Rober Mitchum was a great singer)

Robert Mitchum admired Charles Laughton who directed the Night of the Hunter. (See an iconic clip from Night of the Hunter here)
Night of the Hunter was scripted by James Agee

Farewell My lovely

Part Ii<> <> <> Part III

James Baldwin August 2, 1924

Baldwin and Marlon (Dangerous Minds – civil rights 1963)

Go Tell It on the Mountain, which Baldwin had worked on for years under various titles, was finally finished during a trip to Switzerland. When New York publisher Alfred Knopf expressed interest in publishing the work, Baldwin returned to America on a ticked bought with a loan from Marlon Brando. His novel was published a year later in 1953 and received rave reviews. (via)

James Baldwin published “A Talk to Teachers” in The Saturday Review of Dec. 21, 1961. The essay was originally delivered as an address in New York City on Oct. 16, 1963, titled “The Negro Child: His Self-Image.”

See a photo of James Baldwin with Marlon Brando and Charles Heston (Strange to see Charles Heston there with them).

Two related links:

Hidden in the Open (Flickr: A Photographic Essay of Afro American Male Couples )

James Zwerg’s physical wounds healed after he was attacked by an Alabama mob, but the emotional wounds festered