Happy Covid Christmas -2020
December 21st, 2020Tree
Soviet Santa (How Santa Survived the Soviet Era)
Edgard Varese, Frank Zappa Connection
Frank Zappa – Birth date, December 21
Edard Varese – Birth date, December 22
Choose Alan Rudolph, & his Collaborators
December 18th, 2020
(Campbell Scott as Benchley and Jennifer Jason Leigh as Dorothy Parker)
Alan Rudolph the most underrated independent filmmaker.. he was Robert Altman’s assistant. & Altman produced some films for Alan… “you either know all of his films or none at all..” I love many of his films.
Choose Me (Ed Ruscha designed & appeared.. G. Bujold, Keith Carradine etc), Equinox (Mathew Modeine). Made in Heaven, The Moderns, After Glow (Julie Christie was nominated for an Oscar, Nick Nolte), Trouble in Mind, The Secret Lives of Dentists (Hope Davis, Cambell Scott.. love this film).. Albert Finney was directed by him..Breakfast of Champions.
There’s so much confidence and freedom that comes from that way of doing things. Robert Altman and Alan Rudolph make the set the place to be. It’s fun. It’s a kind of creative freedom that’s really inspiring. Altman loved actors so much. He was a great mentor for me, really.
Jennifer Jason Leigh
Bujold starred in Choose Me (1984), directed and written by Alan Rudolph. She promptly made two more films for Rudolph:Trouble in Mind (1985) and The Moderns (1988).
Happy birthday Alan Rudoph – the vision of a filmmaker
Partners in mind, Keith Carradine and Alan Rudolph
Here is the list of actors/actresses who worked with Alan Rudolph and Robert Altman.
Keith Carradine, Julie Christie , Geraldin Chaplin, Jennifer Jason Leigh,Emily Watson, Mathew Modine (Equinox) Lori Singer, Jeff Goldblum .
Our Hero, John Le Carre Showed us the World beyond England
December 15th, 2020
(Photo of John Le Carre by Lord Snowdon)
John le Carré Knew England’s Secrets
He revealed more about the country’s ruling class than any political writer of his era.
Writers, Friends remembered John Le Carre
Actor Ralph Fiennes and author John Le Carre pose for photographs at an auction in aid of The Constant Gardeners’ Trust, at the Soho Hotel in London, Sunday March 12, 2006. The trust was set up to help the people of Kenya, where the book and film The Constant Gardener, was set. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Photo credit should read: Ian West/PA
Ralph Fiennes, actor
When I was approached by [producer] Simon Channing Williams in 2003 about making The Constant Gardener, I was already an enormous fan of le Carré’s books. I loved the world he created. And then I met the man, and he was so charming and generous of spirit and immediately available for conversation about the novel and the character. I must have fired all sorts of spurious questions at him but I just remember how he was very gregarious and excited about the project. (viaread more)
(Ralph Fiennes and Pete Postlethwaite from the Constant Gardner)
The Constant Gardner
John Le Carre on Philip Seymour Hoffman
(Philip Seymour Hoffman with German cast)
Kim Ki Duk Dies of Covid 19, in Latvia at 59
December 11th, 2020
(Spring Summer Fall Winter and Spring )
Deadline obit, Kim Ki Duk dies of Covid 19 at 59 (South Korean director won prizes at Venice, Cannes and Berlin)
Jean Louis Trintignant at 90, 2020
December 11th, 2020
(The Conformist)
Jean Louis Trintignant
Robbe Grillet
Trans Europe Express a film directed by Alain Robbe Grillet
Jean Louis Trintignant surprises in Amour
When Mr. Trintignant was named best actor (for “Amour”) at the recent European Film Awards, it was his first acting honor of any kind in four decades. He was not, in fact, heavily laureled even in the period of his greatest success, the 1960s and ’70s, when he starred in more than his share of international hits — pictures like “A Man and a Woman” (1966), directed by Claude Lelouch; Eric Rohmer’s “My Night at Maud’s” (1969); Costa-Gavras’s “Z” (1969); and Bernardo Bertolucci’s “Conformist” (1970) — and seemed to be working constantly, primarily in his native France, sometimes elsewhere in the world. (Read more here)
Eric Rohmer directed Jean Louis Trintignant in My Night at Maud
(Il Sorpasso – directed by Dino Risi – with Vittorio Gassman)
Goodbye Suh Se Ok, Korea’s Art Abstract Pioneer
December 6th, 2020
(Dancing Two People)
Artist Suh Se Ok, Pillar of Korean Contemporary Painting, Dies at 91
Effie Gray, Portrait of Ruskin, & Bronte Sisters
December 4th, 2020
Effie Gray wiki – scripted by Emma Thompson
“Effie Gray is more than just an ordinary costume drama”
Portrait of John Ruskin by Millais
Brontes Sisters
Brontes Sisters – Modern Family – art forum
Sensitive to the extreme limits the Brontë sisters faced owing to their sex, Téchiné is careful not to overdramatize the fact that Charlotte, Emily, and Anne all published, in 1847, their first novels under male pseudonyms (becoming, respectively, the “brothers” Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell). The director’s insistence on understatement—though never at the expense of diminishing the anguish and thwarted desire the sisters endured during their too-short lives (all died before reaching the age of forty)—clearly guided the performances as well.
Agnieska Holland Directed “Mr Jones”
November 28th, 2020
(‘Mr. Jones – a film directed by Agnieska Holland, with James Norton, Vanessa Kirby, Peter Sarsgaard)
Agnieska Holland Interview (Film Comment)
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Mr. Jones Quotes
“It was not unrest, it was a tactic. The Nazis now have an excuse to end all opposition.” – Gareth Jones
“War begins in the minds of men.” – Gareth Jones
On “Europa Europa”
Burning Bush miniseries directed by Agnieska Holland was on the tragic story of Czech dissident Jan Pallach.
Agnieska Holland directed Total Eclipse – Leo Dicaprio as Rimbaud and Verlaine played by David Thewlies.
Happy birthday Agnieska Holland!
Noguchi Sculpture for White House Rose Garden
November 24th, 2020
Japanese American sculptor Isamu Noguchi’s piece, titled “Floor Frame,” is displayed in the White House Rose Garden on Saturday, Nov. 21, 2020, in Washington. Noguchi is the first Asian American artist to be featured in the White House collection, according to the first lady and the White House Historical Association. He died in 1988. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Noguchi Sculpture for the White House Rose Garden
Isamu Noguchi’s American Story: How a Small Sculpture Made a Big Impact at the White House
Previous post (Isamu Noguchi, Yoshiko Yamaguchi, + tea ceremony with Charlie Chaplin etc)
Happy Thanksgiving!
Photographs by Masatoshi Nagase
November 19th, 2020
Prevous post – Kiki and Masatoshi Nagase
(Photo of Matt Dillon by Masatoshi Nagase)
(Photo of Hou Hsiao Hsien by Masatoshi Nagase)
Previous post – Hou Hsiao Hsien
(Christopher Dolye – photo by Masatoshi Nagase)
The Last Life in the Universe – cinematography by Christopher Doyle.
(Shark Fin photo of Tadanobu Asano by Nagase)
(Nov 27 update: Happy birthday Tadanobu Asano)
RIP Soumitra Chatterjee, Actor, Playwright, Poet
November 15th, 2020Soumitra Chatterjee: India acting legend dies, aged 85
Soumitra Chatterjee (January 19, 1935 — November 15, 2020)
(photo via)
The third movie of the trilogy, Apur Sansar, which released in 1959, was also Chatterjee’s debut film. He would go on to star as the lead actor in 14 of Ray’s films.
Pauline Kael called Chatterjee Ray’s “one-man stock company” who moved “so differently in the different roles he plays that he is almost unrecognisable”.
Chatterjee, who starred in more than 300 movies, was also an accomplished playwright, theatre actor and poet.
RIP Aldo Tambellini, Pioneered Electric Intermedia
November 13th, 2020
Aldo TambelliniHe pioneered electronic intermedia, and is a painter, sculptor, and poet. He died at age 90, in 2020.
Aldo Tambellini, the pioneering artist and film-maker who had an obsession with the colour black, has died aged 90. He will be remembered among other things for developing what he termed “electromedia” – the bringing together of multiple forms including strobes, dance, film, poetry and slide projection. “We have lost a titan,” said Stuart Comer, a curator at MoMA in New York.
Aldo Tambellini (born 29 April 1930) is an Italian American artist.
(R)evolution in Art & Physics: The All-Round Genius of Aldo Tambellini
