Vitro Nasu

Liv Ullman on Erland on youtube via MUBI (scroll down)

With Lena Olin After the Rehearsal
(see full film After the Rehearsal here on youtube)
Guardian Obit

Erland Josephson, who has died aged 88 after suffering from Parkinson’s disease, was artistically linked with Bergman even more than Max Von Sydow, Liv Ullmann and Ingrid Thulin. Josephson appeared in more than a dozen of Bergman’s films, and played a Bergman surrogate in Ullmann’s Faithless (2000).

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(Photo by Werner Pawlok)

“I am of the international upper class, the Swedish petit bourgeoisie of Jewish extraction with poor language skills, a conveyor of a few expressions and faces, with some intonation that combines ancient human experience with timely coquetry”

“In Bergman’s world I represented a sort of intellectual, sceptical, ironic person, rather cold and frustrated,” he said. “When I went abroad and made films in Italy and other places, I was used in different ways. I was often cast as crazy people … I think perhaps that changed how Ingmar saw me. Suddenly I was on the more magical side of his world, playing the people with fantasies, variety, the artists.”

Erland Josephson Gif Animation (Whoa!)

Nostalgia Directed by Tarkovsky
(Full film with Annoying voice over)

When Andrei Tarkovsky, having recently left Russia, wanted an actor to convey his poignant longing for his homeland, his “nostalgia,” he chose Erland Josephson. It is Josephson’s face which makes him so effective on film, that bearlike aspect, his ability to look lost and forlorn, to convey a sense of suffering and bewilderment, in spite of his bluff exterior. (via)

Judith Butler Happy birthday!
(Portrait by Rollin Beamish)

Your Behavior Creates Your Gender (Big Think on youtube)

JUdith butler in Astra Taylor’s Examined Life

Eammmanuelle Riva Bon Anniversaire. (Feb 24 – birthday of Emmanuelle Riva)

Luminous Emmanuelle Riva 1959 interview – talking about Hiroshima Mon Amour

Hiroshima Mon Amour or Futon and Cropped Hair

See the whole movie on youtube Hiroshima Mon Amour

Richard Hamilton Pop Visionary’s would have been 90 years old today.

(via)

NYtimes First Amendment Crusader Barney Rosset dies.

LA Obit

Barney Rosset, the renegade founder of Grove Press who fought groundbreaking legal battles against censorship and introduced American readers to such provocative writers as Harold Pinter, Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco and Jean Genet, died Tuesday in New York City. He was 89.
His daughter, Tansey Rosset, said he died after undergoing surgery to replace a heart valve.

Original Maverick

Nobody pigeonholes Barney Rosset—longtime owner of Grove Press, anti-censorship crusader, countercultural icon.

Paris Review Interview

Always undercapitalized, Grove often paid low advances. But writers came to Grove because it championed their work in an often hostile environment. In the fifties, repressive obscenity laws made it illegal to publish D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer. Rosset deliberately set out to overturn these laws, publishing and defending these books, and others, in court. Over the years, Grove took on hundreds of lawsuits, in the process expanding the range of public discourse.

Letter from Paris
Joan Mitchell to Barney Rosset
July 9,1948

Dear Schmuckie (read her letter here)

Miami Herald

Rosset’s first interest was film. Cinematographer Haskell Wexler was a childhood friend and during World War II Rosset met the directors John Huston and Frank Capra while attending the Signal Corps photographic school.(read more here)

Barney and Joan Mitchell (See a photo of Barney in front of Joan’s nude photo – yes another nude photo)

Joan Mitchel -Early Years (Read how Joan got Barney to Grove.)

“That happened through my first wife, Joan Mitchell, later a very famous artist. Joan’s mother was at one time the editor of Poetry magazine and a poet herself. Joan was a very astute person, with a very good taste for writing, just as good as it was for painting. She was the one who really directly got me into Grove. ”

Once I understood Bach’s music,’ Nina recalls, ‘I wanted to be a concert pianist. Bach made me dedicate my life to music.’

Three and 21 seconds into playing brilliant piano, Nina introduces the lyrics by Cole Porter “You’d be so nice to come home”. (Everytime I listen it sends the chills up my spine).

Nina Simone February 21, 1933

Edna St.V.Millay February 22, 1892

Baby Edna

This red-haired, green-eyed beauty was born in 1892 in Maine to a financially-strained single mother and a household of talented, artistic sisters.

A tribute to Edna St.Vincent Millay a free spirited poet gets a nice bio/photos from a blogger.

Lovely Edna

Dozens of men and women fell in love with her. Vincent slept with them all, but kept her heart at arm’s length.

Funny version of “What Lips My Lips Have Kissed’ on youtube.

Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare.
Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace,
And lay them prone upon the earth and cease
To ponder on themselves, the while they stare
At nothing, intricately drawn nowhere
In shapes of shifting lineage; let geese
Gabble and hiss, but heroes seek release
From dusty bondage into luminous air.

O blinding hour, O holy, terrible day,
When first the shaft into his vision shone
Of light anatomized! Euclid alone
Has looked on Beauty bare. Fortunate they
Who, though once only and then but far away,
Have heard her massive sandal set on stone.
-Edna St.Vincent Millay

Nuovomondo

Tokyo Chorus – full film

Okada Tokihiko–

Born on Feb 18, 1903, Okada Tokihiko was a charismatic actor who died of tuberculosis a month and two days before turning 31 years of age. He made 5 films directed by Ozu Yasujiro. His stage name was given by Tanizaki Junichiro. (via) Well respected actress Okada Mariko was one year old when her father died. (Okada Mariko who appeared in two films directed by Ozu and one of which was his last film Akibiyori..see her photo and a review here )

Exquisite and economical. (Criterion) (Youtube excerpt does not do justice here.) Tokyo Chorus the DVD is available on netflix.

Combining three prevalent genres of the day—the student comedy, the salaryman film, and the domestic drama—Ozu created this warmhearted family comedy, and demonstrated that he was truly coming into his own as a cinema craftsman

A child actress on the right was Takamine Hideko .
Takamine Hideko (Previous post shows Takamine in Mistress based on Mori Ogai)
See more photos and review here.

Beyond the family-oriented exchanges that anyone who’s had to raise children on a limited income can easily relate to, Tokyo Chorus offers a variety of other pleasures, including some nice vintage exteriors from the old city of Tokyo, before it had been transformed even further into the gleaming neon metropolis we’ve known for the past several decades. And it’s also easy to admire Ozu’s social conscience and earnest desire to boost the morale of Depression-era Japan.

The Lady and the Beard is the second teaming of Ozu, Kitamura, and Okada. The cast of the famous beau Eipan (Okada’s nickname) in a very masculine part (with beard) was a weird, but successful idea of Kitamura. The audience has the great pleasure to see his handsome face after he shaves the beard. In the autumn of 1929, Okada had changed from Nikkatsu to Shochiku. The Lady and the Beard is his third film with Ozu, after That Night’s Wife and Young Miss. This film was shot in a mutual effort in a mere 8 days (including overnight work).(Via)

Okada as Judge
from Water Magician/Taki no Shiraito

Taki no Shiraito (Water Magician with English subtitles – youtube)

Water magician

Donald Richie writes that this was the first of Mizoguchi’s “woman’s pictures.” By this, he is referring to the many movies that Mizoguchi made which featured female lead roles and heroines.

Tokyo Chorus is a must see for Ozu fans and Okada gave his finest performance, as for the Water Magician the film belonged to the actress Irie Takako who produced this film.

Ozu Yasujiro. (previous post)

The son of a physician of the aristocratic warrior (samurai) class, Mori Ōgai studied medicine, at first in Tokyo and from 1884 to 1888 in Germany.

Mori Ogai

February 17, 1862 – one of the creators of modern Japanese literature.

Sansho Dayu

Or see full film here (youtube)

Based on an ancient legend, as recounted by celebrated author Mori Ōgai (in his short story of the same name, written in 1915), and adapted by Mizoguchi, Sanshō Dayū [Sanshō the Steward, aka Sanshō the Bailiff] is both distinctively Japanese and as deeply affecting as a Greek tragedy. Described in its opening title as “one of the oldest and most tragic in Japan’s history”, Mizoguchi depicts an unforgettably sad story of social injustice, family love, and personal sacrifice – all conveyed with exquisite tone and purity of emotion. Master of Cinema

Takamine Hideko and Akutagawa Hiroshi in Mistress (film based on Ogai’s Wilde Geese)

Ōgai’s most popular novel, Gan (1911–13; part translation: The Wild Goose), is the story of the undeclared love of a moneylender’s mistress for a medical student who passes by her house each day. Ōgai also translated Hans Christian Andersen’s autobiographical novel Improvisatoren.

Dancing Girl (Maihime) in German and Japanese on youtube (Directed by Masahiro Shinoda and pop singer Go Hiromi played Mori Ogai)

In 1890 he published the story “Maihime” (“The Dancing Girl”), an account closely based on his own experience of an unhappy attachment between a German girl and a Japanese student in Berlin. It represented a marked departure from the impersonal fiction of preceding generations and initiated a vogue for autobiographical revelations among Japanese writers.

Ogai museum in Germany

Dancing Girl (Maihime)

Akutagawa Ryunosuke was Hiroshi’s father.

Vita Sexualis (Good reads)

Ogai (Brushwork of his name in Flickr bold and beatiful)

Vist Mori Ogai’s and Natsume Soskei houses on youtube (the narrator mispronounced both names)
Soseki (Previous Post)

Ogai’s daughter is Mori Mari who is also a published author.

See 3 portraits of Ogai by Thomas Klingenstein

Love is such an old fashioned word
The lovers

A pair of abstract lovers by Fung Ching Kelling

And happy birthday Janet Paparelli (previous Valentine’s post with Klaus Nomi – see her paintings)
(Digital image of Janet Paparelli by Fung Ching Kelling)

The Man (and others we all miss)

Happy birthday Gerhard Richter

Gerhard Richter at Marian Goodman

See a clip about his recent exhibition – Panorama at Tate

Spanning nearly five decades, and coinciding with the artist’s 80th birthday, Gerhard Richter: Panorama is a major retrospective exhibition that groups together significant moments of his remarkable career.

The artist and the terrorist, or the paintable and the unpaintable: Gerhard Richter and the Baader-Meinhof group

Gerhard Richter’s favorite author is Thomas Bernhard (They are both born on Feb 9)

Robert Hass reading a poem on Gerhard Richter

Gerhard Richter Colors on youtube

This was going around, finally saw this – amazing!

Tom Sacks

Space Talk (previous post – see his NASA art)

Catalan Painter Antoni Tapies, Pioneer of European Abstract Art, Dies at 88

Tapies with Schonberg soundtrack on youtube

Antoni Tàpies was born in Barcelona in 1923 into a cultured, middle-class, Catalan nationalist family who, since the 19th century, had been part of a publishing and book-selling tradition that awoke in him an early love of books and reading.

More art here

Antoni Tapies (13 December 1923 – died Barcelona, 6 February 2012)

Full movie on youtube was taken down..but luckily saw the film last week on youtube.

Quite possibly the most stunning shot in Fassbinder’s entire oeuvre: two dizzying orbits, and two destinies intertwined with consummate precision.(commentary via youtube)

Martha review here.

Martha, long unavailable, proves to be one of Fassbinder’s dramatic and visual triumphs. It features a brilliantly stylized performance from star Margit Carstensen and the virtuosic camerawork of Fassbinder’s frequent collaborator, Michael Ballhaus. This riveting tale of a sado-masochistic marriage is astonishing in its balance of psychological horror and pitch-black comedy.

R.I.P. Ben Gazarra

Ben Gazzara, an intense actor whose long career included playing Brick in the original “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” on Broadway, roles in influential films by John Cassavetes and work with several generations of top Hollywood directors, died on Friday in Manhattan. He was 81.

In Cassavetes’s Husbands (1970), The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976) and Opening Night (1976), “he plays varieties of himself, as Cassavetes saw him: the moderate man who loses his head and takes immoderate action,” blogs the New Yorker’s Richard Brody.

I was enraptured. I was flattered that someone like that would be in love with me. But I didn’t know how deeply she was in love with me until I left her. She told others, not me, that I broke her heart. That’s the kind of classy woman she was.”read more here

Ben and Audrey co-starred in two films, Bloodline (1979) and They All Laughed (1981).. (usually overlooked by Audrey Hepburn fans).

MUBI obit

“Making Saint Jack was one of the great experiences of my life,” Gazzara told Ben Slater, author of Kinda Hot, which tells the story of the making of Peter Bogdanovich’s 1979 adaptation of Paul Theroux’s novel.

Ben Gazzara as Charles Bukowski explains “Style” from Tales Of Ordinary Madness

Interview of Ben Gazarra on Charlie Rose

Wislawa Szymborska

R.I.P. Wislawa Szymborska Feb 1, 2012 (Poetry Foundation)

Well-known in her native Poland, Wisława Szymborska received international recognition when she won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996. In awarding the prize, the Academy praised her “poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality.”

(Washington Post)

Szymborska, a heavy smoker, died in her sleep of lung cancer Wednesday evening at her home in the southern city of Krakow, her personal secretary Michal Rusinek said.

Three Poems by Wislawa

Three Oddest Words

First Love

Possibilites

Dorothea Tanning and Max Ernst

Dorothea Tanning Surrealist Painter Dies at 101 .

PBS on Mike Kelly see another video.

Mike Kelley dead at 58 – an apparent suicide