Vitro NasuIconoclastic Incubator
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Alan Watts with Laura Huxley (youtube)
Aldous Huxley with D H Lawrence
(Huxley and his wife Maria visited D.H. Lawrence in Taos)
Three Kings – Carl Jung, Adous Huxley and Stanley Kubrick (July 26 birthday boys)
Happy birthday Paul Schrader (July 22)
Happy birthday Gus Van Sant (July 23)
Auto Focus reaffirms Schrader’s position as one of America’s most consistently compelling independent filmmakers, particularly after the triumph of his Russell Banks adaptation, Affliction (1997). But Schrader’s status as an independent director also provides a revealing case study in the difficulties of sustaining a career as a filmmaker with a personal vision.
A recurring theme in Schrader’s films is the protagonist on a self-destructive path, or undertaking actions which work against himself, deliberately or subconsciously. The finale often bears an element of redemption, preceded by a painful sacrifice or cathartic act of violence.
Schrader has repeatedly referred to Taxi Driver, American Gigolo, Light Sleeper, The Canyons and The Walker as “a man in a room” stories. The protagonist in each film changes from an angry, then narcissistic, later anxious character, to a person who hides behind a mask of superficiality.(Paul Schrader wiki quotes)
Patty Hearst trailer (youtube)
Embroideryby Ruby Khan 
Surviving Lindsay Lohan.. (Vanity Fair)
Schrader’s hits
Taxi Driver (1976)
Paul Schrader’s screenplay for ‘Taxi Driver’, written when he was 26 and in a “low and bad place”, had a searing energy that director Martin Scorsese and star Robert De Niro (as Travis Bickle) very effectively harnessed. This was the first of Schrader’s “outsider” films about a “man alone”. If Travis Bickle was a vigilante, he was one with existential leanings.
American Gigolo (1980)
Schrader’s most stylish movie. Richard Gere is the male escort in LA, a narcissistic outsider wearing Armani.
Affliction (1997)
James Coburn won an Oscar for his performance as the mean-spirited father of a small-town cop (Nick Nolte) in this bleak but powerful adaptation of a Russell Banks novel.
(Vanity Fair fails to mention Mishima. Auto Focus, The Light Sleeper, Patty Hearst, The Comfort of Strangers are among Schrader’s best films)
Photo of Sprial Jetty by Gianfranco Gorgoni
Photo of Robert Smithson by Gianfranco Gorgoni
“…the artist seeks…. the fiction that reality will sooner or later imitate.”
Robert Smithson from “A Museum of Language in the Vicinity of Art,” 1968
Robert Smithson homepage (simply fabulous)
Robert Smithson 
by Alice Neel
On July 20, 1973, Smithson died in a plane crash, while surveying sites for his work Amarillo Ramp in the vicinity of AmarilloOn July 20, 1973, Smithson died in a plane crash, while surveying sites for his work Amarillo Ramp in the vicinity of Amarillo, Texas. (via wiki)
Nancy Holt 
his widow passed away last February.
Eric Cantona 
(photo by Patrick Swirc) King and I Eric Cantona
Click to see large
The awkward squad Ken Loach and Eric Cantona looked like a mismatch, until they worked together and it turned out they’re soul brothers – uncompromising and intense. So how come the result is Loach’s most light-hearted movie in years? Simon Hattenstone talks to them both
Happy birthday Ken Loach born on July 17. (his new film is called Jimmy’s House.)
Cantona & 
Assange working out togeher..
Top Goals
These Pro Athletes Gave Up Sports For Reasons You’d Never Believe
Eric Cantana, Borg, Pat Tillman were dicussed..
See Blue White – Tube – Soothing Soccor video art
Rembrant Born: July 15, 1606
Museum Hours 
(click to see large)
Museum Hours trailer on youtube.
Old masters, sweet mystery – A.O Scott
“Museum Hours,” Jem Cohen’s quietly amazing, sneakily sublime new film, is partly a reflection on such aesthetic puzzles. Shot on high-definition digital video and super-16-millimeter film in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, the film lingers over great paintings by Rembrandt, Bruegel and other European masters, inviting us to contemplate the complex, half-obscured tales they might tell. In one scene, an art historian (Ela Piplits) tries to initiate a crowd of skeptical tourists into the mysteries of Bruegel’s “Conversion of St. Paul” (1567), and Mr. Cohen’s camera supports her arguments by finding details in the picture that might be easy to overlook.
Jem Cohen directed the museum hours.
Iris Murdoch was born on 15 July 1919
Walter Benjamin, Iris and Derrida (previous post)
“Until the escape into art, then nature,
the stories are dark, dark, dark.
Parsifal with no Grail.
Isolde with no Death.
Papageno with no flute.”
Summer Interlude – Iris and Derrida
“Murdoch’s implicit philosophical position is austere, classical, rigorous: unromantic, and pessimistic. Not that pessimism precludes comedy: on the contrary, it is probably the basis of the comic spirit.
See Ingrid 
Bergman at the museum, looking at the sculpture.
Viaggio In Italia
(via)
On Kawara via artnet
A giant of conceptual art dead at 81
Click to enlarge 
He was life, blood, heart
Alan Sondheim (via netBehavior)
On July 8, 2014, Guggenheim announced On Kawara solo show for 2015 .
Marcel Proust by Nadar 
(Click to see large)
(via)
He was born 143 years ago on July 10, 1871.
On ne guérit d’une souffrance qu’à condition de l’éprouver pleinement.
We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full.
Previous post:
Celeste, La Captive and Proust Questionnaire
Alan Bates page on Proust (Janet McTeer played Celeste.)
Proust was, of course, a forceful personality. He utilized everything at his disposal to climb up the social ladder, and then to escape from it in order to hide and write. To move up in society, he had tremendous charm, effusive and extraordinary correspondence, great wit, and the psychological control that the physically weak can exert on those prone to guilt or compassion. Later in his life, when he knew he must withdraw from the vacuous life of the Fauburg St. Germaine in order to accomplish anything, he used his health to absent himself without alienating the hostesses who had brought him into it.
From his chart via Proust said that
1) Starfall camp (ABC, learn to read, stories including Greek, chinese myths etc)
Music animations – Beethoven, Chopin, Mozart, Scott Joplin, Offenbach and Tchaikovsky.
Quotations from Shakepeare – A horse! a horse! My Kingdom or a horse Starfall camp
2) O r i s i n a l (game site).
nice design, many games are soothing..
Panda Run
The Perious Voyage
(Look out for Dragon!)
Friends stick together.. (requires practices)
These little pigs for 1 – 3 years old
3) Muffin films 
(Fun, fun, fun)
Designed by Amy Winfrey.
4) Boowa & Kwala (from Australia in English & French)
Excellent site for kids..a must visit (many puzzles, stories.. totally delightful).
5) 
Their first gameSamorost is here..
Amanita Design an imaginative game site by Czech team of designers.
6) Poisson Rouge amazing game site from France. One site gives language lessons. The chinese site is excellent.
7) Future Physics
Grab a planet and play with it.
Lena Olin was heartbreaking and ferocious..she won New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actress. Enemies, A Love Story.. one of Paul Mazursky’s great films.
Click to see large 
via
NYtimes obit:Paul Mazursky Director Who Captured a Changing America
Paul Mazursky dies at 84
Abstract expressionist panter Paul Jenkins did the paintings for the Unmarried Woman.
Robin Williams had to learn to play Sax and Russian language. (Moscow to Hudson – Robin’s obit here)
Mazursky on actors talking about actorsand his first film (youtube)
A link to a video of Paul Mazursky and Mel Brooks discussing Hitler is on this page here..
h/t to Patrick Morell
