Archive for February, 2011
Adiós Victor Martinez
Friday, February 25th, 2011We’re sad here at the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto to announce the death of poet and novelist Victor Martinez. His bio on the Harper Collins website reads: Victor Martinez was born and raised in Fresno, California, the fourth in a family of twelve children. He attended California State University at Fresno and Stanford University, and has worked as a field laborer, welder, truck driver, firefighter, teacher, and office clerk. His poems, short stories, and essays have appeared in journals and anthologies. Mr. Martinez was awarded the 1996 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature for Parrot in the Oven, his first novel. (Meghan Ward)
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Victor Martinez 2.21.1954 – 2.18.2011
“It was very important for Victor to be known as an American writer,” said his wife, Tina Alvarez. “He was not writing for any specific group. He was writing for everyone.”
“His poetry was more about life and thoughts. It made you think.”
When Martinez died in the early morning of Feb. 18, 2011, in his apartment on Capp Street, a few days before his 57th birthday, that book Parrot in the Oven: Mi Vida, had become part of the canon of books taught to American high school students.
Martinez, who counts among his friends, the Chicana writers Sandra Cisneros (The House on Mango Street, Woman Hollering Creek) and feminist Ana Castillo, makes a sustained effort not to live a publicly writerly lifestyle. “When people ask what I do, I don’t say ‘I’m a writer,'” he says. “I tell them I drive a truck, I wash dishes, so people aren’t suspicious of your motives, or put a spin on their relationship with you. (Kevin Davis – Mission Scribe)
PBS Interview after winning the award
Victor’s wife told him to go with the big publisher so he did.
Victor loved Giacometti wrote Jurgen Trautwein via email.
Victor Martinez was my friend for 20 years, a great inspiration, a true artist and an amazing poet and writer. I will really miss you Victor.
Victor Martinze 
with Enrique Chagoya, Sal Garcia at the Berkeley Art Museum (photo by jtwine)
Francisco X. Alarcon
It was at Stanford University where Victor Martínez met Tina Alvarez, the love of his life. I told Linda Wilson over the phone, that one morning Tina and Vic called me to come in a hurry to their pad on Capp Street. I ran from my flat on San Jose Avenue, few blocks away, and found out that they had decided to get married that day and they wanted me as a witness. (Via)
Leonard Cohen and Robert Altman
Sunday, February 20th, 2011
(direct link to opening number The Stranger by Leonard Cohen and the Trailer (two songs)
“I thought it was a fine movie. That night I was in the studio and received a call from Hollywood. It was from Bob Altman saying he would like to use my music in a film. Quite honestly, I said, ‘I don’t know your work, could you tell me some of the films you’ve done?’ He said Mash, and I said that’s fine, I understand that’s quite popular, but I’m really not familiar with it. Then he said there was a film I’ve probably never seen called ‘Brewster McCloud.’ I told him I just came out of the movie and thought it was an extraordinary film, use any music of mine.” From Robert Altman: Oral Biography)
Sisters of Mercy <> <> <> The ending Winter Lady
Bob 
and Leonard Cohen
On James Dean’s 80th birthday, this film probably deserves its own little mention. The James Dean Story, a 79 minute documentary chronicling the life and times of Jimmy Dean, came out two years after the young actor’s death. Most notably, the film was directed by Robert Altman, a young director who would eventually make MASH, Nashville, The Player, Gosford Park, etc. (Watch the James Dean Story by Robert Altman )
Robert Altman – February 20 1927 
(Previous Post : Robert Altman)
Lunch with a Lonely Hunter – Carson McCullers
Saturday, February 19th, 2011Carson and George Davis by Cartier Bresson <><> Carson by Richard Avedon
A biography 
of a most fascinating author.
Carson McCullers February 19, 1917
“Mrs McCullers and perhaps Mr. Faulkner are the only writers since the death of D. H. Lawrence with an original poetic sensibility. I prefer Mrs McCullers to Mr. Faulkner because she writes more clearly; I prefer her to D. H. Lawrence because she has no message.” – Graham Greene
“Carson’s major theme; the huge importance and nearly insoluble problems of human love.” – Tennessee Williams.
Karen Blixen and Marilyn (including the link to the menu)
Carson kissing Marilyn here.
Watch Marlon Brando talking to himself in the mirro.. hilarious
A Reflection in a Golden Eye was directed by John Huston. Carson and Huston remained close friends.
Carson and Reeves
McCullers is reluctant to reveal her feelings or her reasons for returning to marry Reeves a second time in 1945. The inclusion of the war letters between Carson and Reeves – an inclusion that Carson herself dictated in the original manuscript of her autobiography – betrays this reticence, and instead shows a tender, strongly felt bond between the two.
Unfinished autobiography by Carson (Letter: Carson McCullers to Reeve McCullers, late December 1944.)
Simon Callow directed the Ballad of Sad Cafe (Vanessa Redgrave and Keith Carrdine boxing here) <> <> <> The Ballad of Sad Cafe (Sesame Street)
Alan Arkin was nominated for an Oscar – The Heart is Lonley Hunter.
Christian Marclay
Saturday, February 12th, 2011
Christian Marclay Untitled, 1984
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Introduction of the Clock on youtube<> <> Paula Cooper The Clock <> <> his works from past
Christian Marclay
Everyone is raving about the Clock
Most unusually, for a work of conceptual art, this masterpiece of montage is deliriously entertaining. It’s also totally functional — a working timepiece of incredible precision.
Marietta the Egyptologist
Friday, February 11th, 2011
Auguste Mariette (seated, far left) and Emperor Pedro II of Brazil (seated, far right) with others during the monarch’s visit to the Giza Necropolis at the end of 1871. ( via)
Auguste Marietta February 11, 1821 – was a French scholar, archaeologist and Egyptologist.
* gaining government funds to set up the museum in Cairo (aka the Bula Museum or Bulak Museum) in 1863 in order to take the pressure off the sites and stop the trade in illicit antiquities[2].
* the pyramid-fields of Memphis and (exploiting his previous success to find a cache of c.2000BC painted wooden statues such as the Seated Scribe, and the decorated tomb of Khafra) the tombs of Saqqara
* the necropolis of Meidum, and those of Abydos and Thebes
* the great temples of Dendera and Edfu were disinterred
* important excavations were carried out at Karnak (marking the first full Egyptian use of the stratigraphic methods first developed by Karl Richard Lepsius and of photographing every object prior to its excavation), Medinet-Habu and Deir el-Bahri
* Tanis (the Egyptian capital in the Late Period) was partially explored in the Delta
* even Gebel Barkal in Sudan was explored
* He cleared the sands around the Sphinx down to the bare rock, and in the process discovered the famous granite and alabaster monument, the “Temple of the Sphinx”.
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Edfu was not a terribly important place of ancient Egypt, but according to the Egyptian myths it was the place where the falcon-headed god Horus avenged the murder of his father Osiris by killing Seth.
Aida is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni, based on a scenario written by French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette (although there are scholars who argue that the scenario was really written by Temistocle Solera).
It was first performed at the Khedivial Opera House in Cairo on December 24, 1871 under the baton of Giovanni Bottesini.
Happy birthday Peter Gabriel (Feb 13 updated)
Update: Arab wordl – Protests on wiki
18 pieces missing from Egyptian museum
Egypt’s Future from Matt (Pasaudela)
Mr Fish goes to Egypt
Forbidden City
Monday, February 7th, 2011China’s most extravagant monarchs—the Qianlong Emperor (r. 1736–95) presided over China’s last dynasty
弘曆圓形古裝行樂圖像 軸
Portrait of the Qianlong Emperor in Ancient Costume
Lent by the Palace Museum, Beijing
The Qianlong Emperor was a master in using Western-style illusionistic images of himself in different guises to create alternate personae. Here, the youthful emperor had himself portrayed as a cultured Chinese scholar. Sitting in his study appointed with classical Chinese-style furniture, he is poised, brush in hand, to transcribe a poem onto a banana leaf. The only detail that distinguishes him from a traditional scholar is his ornate robe covered with auspicious motifs of flowers and cranes in bright, contrasting colors.
乾隆御筆“層閣延春”貼落
Qianlong Emperor (1711–1799; r. 1736–95)
Calligraphic Inscription, dated 1776
From the Belvedere of Viewing Achievements (Fuwangge)
Lent by the Palace Museum, Beijing
An avid calligrapher, the Qianlong Emperor developed a distinctive style characterized by regularity and restraint. Inscribed on gold-painted paper made specifically for the court, this text describes his anticipation of retirement.
The Emperor’s Private Paradise: Treasures from the Forbidden City
February 1, 2011–May 1, 2011
More photos from Time Magazine
Chinese paintings from as early as the eleventh century depict Buddhist and Daoist figures seated on rustic rootwood chairs as a way of suggesting their indifference to worldly goods and their synchrony with the natural forms of the cosmos.
Pu Yi February 7, 1906
Dr. An Wang February 7, 1920
Offering Table with Lords of the Cremation Grounds fromTibet
Maria and Maritza
Friday, February 4th, 2011
What are you running away from? (In the Passenger Maria was quiet, intelligent, even sweet.)
Adieu Maria Schneider, 1952 – 2011
Daniel Gelin was her father who never acknowleged his paternity.
Pauline Kael on The Last Tango in Paris
The role is said to have been conceived for Dominique Sanda, who couldn’t play it, because she was pregnant, but surely it has been reconceived. With Sanda, a tigress, this sexual battle might have ended in a draw. But the pliable, softly unprincipled Jeanne of Maria Schneider must be the winner: it is the soft ones who defeat men and walk away, consciencelessly. A Strindberg heroine would still be in that flat, battling, or in another flat, battling. But Jeanne is like the adorably sensual bitch-heroines of French films of the twenties and thirties—both shallow and wise. These girls know how to take care of themselves; they know who No. 1 is. Brando’s Paul, the essentially naive outsider, the romantic, is no match for a French bourgeois girl.” – Pauline Kael (via cinema viewfinder)
Maria had a breakdown after the release of “Last Tango in Paris” (New Yorker)
Scroll down to read what Bertolucci said and what Maria said about her trauma she suffered from making the film.
Mario A. posted many images from the most intimate and vulnerable film stills from the Last Tango in Paris.
“Schneider gained a reputation for unreliability, and walked off several movie sets. She showed some taste in abandoning Tinto Brass’s Caligula (1979), but she also left That Obscure Object of Desire (1977) after three weeks of shooting — reportedly in protest at the amount of nudity — so that Luis Buñuel, with surreal logic, decided to cast two women in the role of Conchita.
A few weeks ago the image of Maritza came to this reader’s attention as a possible doppleganger of Maria Schneider.
Dancer Upstairs trailer (directed by J. Malkovich) was modeled after Maritza who is currently serving her term in prison.
It’s a powerful experience to meet a person you have lived with intimately in your head, whom you have had to construct from other people’s memories. I know what Maritza’s Argentine husband Saúl Mankevic thought of her; her poet-lover Rafael Davila; her director at the Ballet Naçional, where she danced Prokofiev as a Cinderella fairy. “She could have been the best ballerina in Peru,” said Vera Stastny. But what I have never been able to work out—perhaps a reason for writing a novel and screenplay about her—is the process that led Maritza one day to exchange the ballet for the bullet.
(Y)ear of the Rabbit
Tuesday, February 1st, 2011
The Rabbit knows how to relax.
Mona Lisa 
Rabbit Moon by Kenneth Anger who was also a Rabbit (February 3, 1927)
The Rabbit Author – John Updike here.
Rabbit 
from Korea – Choi Book(1712~1786?)
(Thanks to Heejae Lee)
The Rabbit is the symbol of longevity.
Their fundamental nature and strength is drawn from the moon. The Chinese believe a person born in this year is very fortunate! Soft spoken rabbits find happiness and contentment. Rabbits are gracious with excellent manners. There is no great inner struggle in their heart. They believe in their own judgment and ability to survive.
Rabbits need trust and tenderness in a relationship. Like the rabbit they hop over obstacles, and always land on their feet! year.
The rabbit’s soft, vulnerable looking exterior is protected by an armor of cautiousness. Hares are very lucky in business and combined with their excellent bargaining wisdom will go far. They find it hard to work under pressure. Hares are the peace makers and good scholars. They may look easy going, but they are actually quite cunning! Being a strong willed person, they go quietly, yet determinedly towards their goals. Rabbits are considerate, understanding, warm, friendly, and easy to be with. They know how to relax!
Most famous Hollywood couple Jolie-Pitt is missing from this list and Henry Miller is missing too..see famous Rabbit people and a collection of rabbit stamp from all over the world. Year of the Rabbit (Hopper home)
Johnny Depp, Germaine Greer, Neil Sedaka, Francis Ford Coppola, Michael Jordan and Drew Barrymore. Harry Belafonte, Ingrid Bergman, Lewis Carroll, John Cleese, Peter Falk, Peter Fonda, James Fox, David Frost,Cary Grant, , Bob Hope, Whitney Houston, John Hurt, Michael Keaton, John Keats, Julian Lennon, Arthur Miller, Roger Moore, Tatum O’Neal, George Orwell, Neil Simon, Jane Seymour, Dusty Springfield, Sting, Orson Welles
In Vietnam it’s a Purr-fect Cat