Vitro Nasu

Kenji Miyazawa cultivated a life as a thinker, a practicing buddhist, a geologist/agronomist, and idealsitic educator and reformer.

From Who is Kenji?

In the introduction to his collection of short stories, The Restaurant of Many Orders, he set himself up as an experimental medium for the chaotic processes of natural phenomena. Kenji Miyazawa was born on Aug 27, 1896. Today he is known mostly for writing children’s stories.
He saw himself as a simple vehicle for reprocessing nature itself. “These stories of mine,” he wrote in 1923, “all came to me from moonlight and rainbows, at places like railroad tracks and fields and forests.”
Kenji Miyazawa, Rebel with a Cause (collection of essays)

He was 37 when he died. (wiki)
Almost totally unknown as a poet in his lifetime, Miyazawa’s work gained its reputation posthumously,[2] and enjoyed a boom by the mid-1990s on his centenary.[3] A museum dedicated to his life and works was opened in 1982 in his hometown. Many of his children’s stories have been adapted as anime, most notably Night on the Galactic Railroad. Many of his tanka and free verse poetry, translated into many languages, are still popular today.

Kame neko (oven cat- a sample story by Kenji Miyazawa)

Drawings by a buddhist/poet/geologist/agronomist/socialist

The World of Kenji Miyazaki

Mexico – high in Julio Cortazar’s list
(“Mexico is one of the countries on my list, but the years go by without me having time to visit it,” Julio Cortázar.)

Julio Cortázar or the writer who saw the world turn upside down

He is considered one of the most innovative and original authors of his time, a master of history, poetic prose and short story in general and a creator of important novels that inaugurated a new way of making literature in the Hispanic world by breaking the classical moulds through narratives that escaped temporal linearity.

Julio Cortazar
(“I love Hopscotch.and a film Antonioni made based on my story.. how cool is that.”)

Julio Cortazar named his cat Theodore Adorno.

Wim Wenders homepage

„THE TOKYO TOILET“ Art Project with Wim Wenders, Koji Yakusho, Tadao Ando et al.
Wim Wenders announces a new art project which includes a short film about high-end public toilets in Shibuya, Tokyo.

Japan’s leading international actor, Kōji Yakusho (Memoirs of a Geisha / Babel etc.) will play the lead role.
The spaces featured in THE TOKYO TOILET (TTT) were designed by world-renowned architects like Tadao Ando, Shigeru Ban,and designers like NIGO, with the idea that a pleasant public restroom could counter the common expectation of a dark, dirty and dangerous place.

“My first reaction was: What? Toilets? Chotto mattete,” said Wim Wenders during the press conference in Tokyo on Wednesday, using the Japanese expression for “wait a minute”.

For Wim Wenders, the project has high social value and he could immediately see the potential and story behind these stylish Tokyo toilets. „Because a toilet is a place where everybody is the same. There’s no rich and poor, no old and young, everybody’s part of humanity“, he said.

The film shooting will take place in Tokyo in October 2022.

Issey Miyake an influential Japanese fashion designer, dies aged 84.

BBC – see his fashion in pictures

Issey Miyake collaborated with the performance artist.. see him upside down wrapped in something.

(Joni Mitchell has been championing Issey Mayake for years.)

(Issey Miyake, 1982 Spring-Summer Collection, rattan bodice and nylon polyester skirt. The rattan is split, colored, and polished. It has been formed to follow the line of the body and bamboo has been woven in to hold the curve in place, and prevent the rattan from separating. Produced with the collaboration of the bamboo artist Kosuge Shochikudo. Photo: Eiichiro Sakata.)

Kwon Young Wu Between Past and Future

Via

Kwon Young-Woo’s (1926-2013) works explore the relationship between traditional materials and abstract expression. The artist is considered as a pioneer in Korean abstract art known as Dansaekhwa.

Thanks to Pascal Blanchard for introducing this artist on FB.

Brian Hioe/info

New Bloom Magazine net/author/Brian Hioe

Brian Hioe is one of the founding editors of New Bloom. He is a freelance journalist, as well as a translator. A New York native and Taiwanese-American, he has an MA in East Asian Languages and Cultures from Columbia University and graduated from New York University with majors in History, East Asian Studies, and English Literature. He was Democracy and Human Rights Service Fellow at the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy from 2017 to 2018.

Popula com/author/Brian Hioe
(Read the articles by Brian Hioe here).

Brian Hioe at Amy Goodman – Pelosi planned Taiwan visit triggers threats.

Jack & Bob

Rafelson did six films with Jack Nicholson, Head (1968), Five Easy Pieces (1970), The King of Marvin Gardens (1972), The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981), Man Trouble (1992), and Blood and Wine (1996).

Photo via Esquire Interview

Bob Rafelson Emerges to Reflect on His Feud-and-Brawl-Filled Career (Esquire Interview)

Hunter S. Thompson was an Aspen neighbor with whom Bob Rafelson would practice shooting using pictures of Richard Nixon.

Bob Rafelson wiki

Rafelson left home at 14 and worked variously as a rodeo rider, a hand on an ocean liner and a jazz musician. He later enrolled at Dartmouth College to study philosophy. He started writing plays in 1953.
During his military service he was based in Japan where he took up disc-jockeying and subsequently working on films produced by the Shochiku company.

(Directed by Bob Rafelson. With Debra Winger, Theresa Russell, and Sami Frey)

Aspen honored Bob Rafelson with the life time achievement award and his lost masterwork Mountains on the Moon
On “Mountains on the Moon” “It’s my best work and it’s my most personal work,” Rafelson said

Jonas Vingegaard wins Tours de France for 1st time

Tours de France 2022 Stage 21 – live updates winner results

Pelotons, Protest, best photos from Tour de France 2022 (Guardian Gallery)

Guardian Obit – RIP Peter Brook

(English theatre and film director Peter Brook was the first person to win the International Ibsen Award, in 2008.)

Moderato Cantabile

This was Peter Brook’s second movie, coming seven years after his first, The Beggar’s Opera (1953); it’s surprising that it seems largely to have dropped off the radar, especially since it brought Moreau the Best Actress award at Cannes that year (shared with Melina Mercouri for Never on Sunday [1960]), with Brook being nominated for the Palme d’Or. It features also an exceptional performance from Belmondo, gloriously miscast and rising to the challenge: instead of his customary extrovert swagger we have here a rendition of great restraint.

<> <> <>

They Say Nothing Stays Same (Aru Sendou no hanashi)

Odagiri’s somber observations about transition within tradition make for a meditative, rewarding viewing experience.
Ten years after his debut feature, Looking for Cherry Blossoms (2009), actor-turned-director Joe Odagiri‘s belated follow-up, They Say Nothing Stays the Same, was selected in a sidebar of 2019’s Venice Film Festival.

Joe Odagiri

photo by Masatoshi Nagase

Immunodeficiency – MUBI (See photos of Chris Doyle, Tilda Swinton and Joe Odagiri.. future project?)

As an actor Odagiri joe was directed by Kim Ki Duk, Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Hirokazu Koreeda.

Abbas Kiarostami
Abbas Kiarostami June 22, 1940 – July 2016 (previous post)

Billy Wilder

was born on June 22, 1906[6] to a family of Polish Jews in Sucha Beskidzka, a small town which, at that time, belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Ranking the films of Billy Wilder

Kris Kristofferson
“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”
Happy birthday Kris Kristofferson!
His film career.
He appeared in Blume in Love (1973) directed by Paul Mazursky, and three Sam Peckinpah films: Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973), Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974), and Convoy (1978) and Michael Ritchie’s Semi-Tough (1977) with Burt Reynolds. He continued acting in Martin Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974), Vigilante Force (1976), and The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea (1976), the romantic drama A Star Is Born (1976) with Barbra Streisand, for which he received a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor soon followed.

(Liverpool – MUBI )

Eureka – Viggo’s new film with Jauja director Lisandro Alonso

The first part of the film, titled “Western” and set on the U.S.-Mexico border, will have echos of Jauja but is not a sequel, following Mortensen playing a father named Murphy searching for his daughter (Agger), who has been kidnapped. The second part of the film, titled “Pine Ridge,” is set in South Dakota on a Native American Reservation in the present-day. While there aren’t details on Part 3 yet, Part 4, titled “Amazonia,” will follow a character named Ubirajara, “a member of a far happier indigenous settlement in the Amazon who goes off to dig for gold, contracting, literally, gold fever.”

<> <>

Happy birthday Lisandro Alonso