Vitro Nasu

(See full film Shadowlands )

(photo via)
Lord Richard Attenborough –
Dead at 90..

Goodbye Lauren Bacall (photo via)

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(Repost – Hoagy Carmichael on our mind)

Half Nelson . Ryan Gosling explains Dialectics.

Aug 27 birthday of – German philosopher Hegel , a major figure in German Idealism. His historicist and idealist account of reality revolutionized European philosophy and was an important precursor to Continental philosophy and Marxism. Hegel’s influential conceptions are those of speculative logic or “dialectic”, “absolute idealism”. They include “Geist” (spirit), negativity, sublation (Aufhebung in German), the “Master/Slave” dialectic, “ethical life” and the importance of history. (wiki)

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Portrait of Goethe by Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein

Johan Wolfganv von Geothe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832)

In 1810, Goethe published his Theory of Colours, which he considered his most important work. In it, he contentiously characterized color as arising from the dynamic interplay of light and darkness through the mediation of a turbid medium.[33] In 1816, Schopenhauer went on to develop his own theory in On Vision and Colors based on the observations supplied in Goethe’s book. After being translated into English by Charles Eastlake in 1840, his theory became widely adopted by the art world, most notably J. M. W. Turner.[34] Goethe’s work also inspired the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, to write his Remarks on Color.

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How Hegel put Goethe’s Urphänomen
to Philosophical Use

“Here Hegel recognizes that in Goethe’s hands, the concept escapes the airless depths of the philosopher’s study and connects up with Nature and the everyday life of the people. And he observes:

“the two worlds greet each other: our abstruse world and the world of phenomenal being. Thus out of rocks and even something metallic Your Excellency prepares for us granite, which we can easily get a handle on because of its Trinitarian nature and which we can assimilate”(Hegel 1984: 699).”

Borges and J. G.Ballard.. Photo by Sophie Baker

MM: Burroughs, like Borges, showed us what it was possible to do. Neither Borges nor Burroughs were available to us until about 1960 or so. I first heard Borges’s stories related to me by a Spanish-speaking Swede while hitch-hiking from Uppsala to Paris. It was a while before City Lights, I think it was, brought out the first translations. Burroughs wasn’t a disappointment, when we finally met him, but Borges was. Burroughs pretty much lived as he wrote, while Borges was a rather conservative man with a keen interest in G. K. Chesterton.

A Literary Hedonist in the classroom :on Professor Borges.

Palermo archeological museum

Riddle of Poetry J.L. Borges
(“One day Cartier-Bresson received a telephone call from the writer JL Borges, who wished to know whether he would be willing to accept a prize for which Borges wanted to nominate him. Read more here) The gift from a blind poet

Two new books about Borges (New Yorker)

Read The Aleph here.

Prologue

Yoshiko Yamaguchi and Mifune Toshiro from Scandal directed by Akira Kurosawa. (A very funny photo – the dude on the right looks like Henry Miller )

“like a great river with a calm surface and a raging current in its depths”, Akira Kurosawa on the works of Mikio Naruse – (thanks to Øivind Klungseth Zahlsen)

Mifune and Takamine Hideko in A Wife’s Heart

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Takamine Hideko in Naruse masterpiece..
(Wong Kar Wai was thinking of Naruse when he made In the Mood for Love.)

Gesture and pose of cinema of M.Naruse

Harvard Archive list of Naruse films

Summer Clouds, When a Woman Ascends the Stairs, Floating Clouds (3 film stills)

Midnight eye

See more full films on youtube
The Actress and the Poet / 女優と詩人 (1935)

1940 film

Mikio Naruse was born on Aug 20, 1905..

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Happy birthday.. Roman Polanski is 81 years old. (2014)

Bitter Moon + Polanski’s first film here. (Fun trailers)

Roman with Gabo (Gabriel Garcia Marquez.)
They met at Cuban Film Festival in Havana, Cuba, Dec 13, 2002.

(Sven Nykvist and Polanski filming The Tenant)

Mr. Polanski also has a gifted collaborator in Sven Nykvist, the cinematographer whose camera plays the role of narrator, directing our attention to curious details, offering humble asides, as 19th-century authors once felt free to do without embarrassment or excuse. (via)

(On the set of “Carnage”)

On Roman Polanski Christoph Waltz said.

I spent three fabulous months with Roman. I like his directness and sharp, sarcastic sense of humor. His precision in moviemaking is beyond words. He’s a grand master, even though he is one of the short guys. My view of him is tolerant and understanding of the man he is today.

Antonio Salieri
8/18/1750 – 5/7/1825
Italian composer
1) Take this quiz..
by Mikhail Simkin

The audio clips below are either from Mozart or from Salieri.

After listening to each clip choose the composer. Hit the Submit button when done. The quiz will be graded and you will see the correct answers.

Google Mozart
digital image by Fung Lin Hall

Bruno Ganz and Dennis (American Friend directed by Wim Wenders, based on a story by Patricia Highsmith )

Dennis Hopper, Wim Wenders, Bruno Ganz, and Nicholas Ray while filming ‘The American Friend,’ 1976 — Caterine Milinaire.

Dennis Hopper last movie and photos (See Jean Tingueley, Ed Ruscha etc)

Neil Young in Desert Shot – Photo by Dennis Hopper
via

Happy birthday Wim Wenders! (With Harry on the left and Dean on the right)

Dean Stockwell – Delicate to Delirium

Photo of Dean Stockwell by Dennis Hopper

Robin Williams had to learn to play Sax and Russian language. (Moscow to Hudson by Paul Mazurksy)

Update:
Oliver Sacks:A Man Could be Anyone.. (via New Yorker)

I sometimes joined the Williamses in the summer at Lake Tahoe. I would go for long swims in the lake, with Robin paddling next to me in a kayak. We would chat about neurology and biology, literature, history, biographies—he was startlingly well informed on pretty much everything under the sun, and this was a very different Robin—thoughtful, relaxed, not onstage, not “on.”
In addition to all his gifts, Robin was the kindest and most generous of men. William James, the great nineteenth-century psychologist, was called “that adorable genius.” For me, more than anyone I have ever known, Robin, too, was that adorable genius. It is infinitely sad that this unique human being, who gave so much and so fully of himself to all of us, should have taken his own life.

Stanley Kauffman Awakening Review

He loved Tour de France..
Lans Armstrong was his best friend.
via biker

See two great videos on Robin Williams from Ron Silliman

Robin Williams salutes Robert de Niro (youtube)
(Update: happy birthday Robert de Nero- Aug 17).

Robin Williams

via

Jan Palach
Jan Palach was born on 11 August 1948- an activist who set himself on fire in in 1969.. Palach’s protest caused extraordinary reaction both in the Czech Republic and abroad.

These web pages present the life story of Jan Palach

His schoolmates liked him for his nice and friendly nature. He was quiet, pensive, and very well-read. Since his early childhood, he was interested in nature, technology, and history.

Poetry and Architecture, Architecture and Poetry
by John Hejduk David Shapiro

The Funeral of Jan Palach

When I entered the first meditation
I escaped the gravity of the object,
I experienced the emptiness,
And I have been dead a long time.

When I had a voice you could call a voice,
My mother wept to me:
My son, my beloved son,
I never thought this possible

I’ll follow you on foot.
Halfway in mud and slush the microphones picked up.
It was raining on the houses;
It was snowing on the police-cars.

The astronauts were weeping,
Going neither up nor out.
And my own mother was brave enough she looked
And it was alright I was dead.

—David Shapiro

When I read of the sacrifice of Jan Palach, I was reading of a heroism toward which I had aspired but recoiled. But it is not for everyone to be such a sacrifice, as many have said, it is not even easy to be a disciple of such a hero. Indeed, Palach finally asked others to refrain from a mechanical martyrdom.

On the art of collaboration
He is perhaps most proud of his long collaboration with the late architect John Hejduk, who served as dean of Cooper Union’s school of architecture for many years. In 1991, a poem Shapiro had written about the Czechoslovak student Jan Palach, who set himself on fire in 1969 to protest the Soviet invasion, was engraved on a plaque as part of a memorial designed by Hejduk and mounted on the grounds of Prague Castle in the Czech Republic.

Sketch for house of suicide by John Hejduk

Pataphysics – interview of David Shapiro

Tang Wei from Golden Era directed by Ann Hui (waiting to see this film – updated May 23, 2019)

Ann Hui (right) received Asian Filmmaker of the Year” Award
at Busan Film Fest

Ann Hui wiki

On 23 May 1947, Ann Hui was born in Anshan, Liaoning province, Manchuria to a Chinese father and a Japanese mother. In 1952, she moved to Macau, then Hong Kong at the age of five and attended St. Paul’s Convent School. Hui then received a Masters in English and comparative literature at the University of Hong Kong until 1972 and later, studied at the London Film School for two years. Before receiving her degree, Hui studied and did her thesis on the works of Alain Robbe-Grillet, a French writer and filmmaker.

Song of the Exile click to see large
Maggie Cheung (right)

One of her most personal work is Song of the Exile
is a 1990 Hong Kong-Taiwanese film, a semi-fictionalised autobiography directed by Ann Hui. It was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival.

A Simple Life
Deanie Ip and Andy Lau both won best actor/actress awards.

Roger Ebert reivewed a Simple Life

A Simple Life (A very moving film.. Ann Hui’s attention to details is amazing.)

Ann Hui has won Best Director (4 times) more than anyone else at the Hong Kong Film Awards. Deanie Ip is the oldest Best Actress recipient (64-years-old at the time of her win).

Inspired by the true story of producer Roger Lee and his servant, the film depicts the relationship between Roger (Lau) and Sister Peach (Ip), a woman who has worked for four generations of Roger’s family.

Two Films on Percy Bysshe Shelley – Haunted Summer & A Shape Of Error.

1) Haunted Summer

2) A Shape of Error – by Abigail Child (Vimeo trailer here)

An experimental l6mm feature, A Shape of Error is based on the life of Percy Bysshe Shelley and his second wife, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley— writers whose lives forecast the modern in their concern for women, free love and labor. Child retells their story as an imaginary home movie, using strategies developed in her earlier films—The Future Is Behind You (2004-05) and Covert Action (1984)— to shape a new kind of narrative. With sound by the acclaimed composer Zeena Parkins (who has worked with John Zorn and Bijork), non-actors in the lead roles and silently shot with Child’s l6mm camera, A Shape of Error is an original—startlingly emotional and engrossing.

Sketches of Sailing Boats by Shelley

Sailing was Shelley’s favourite pursuit in the last year of his life, first on the rivers Serchio and Arno, and latterly off the coast. Rough sketches of sailing vessels are dotted about his notebooks, and many of his poems contain evocative images of boats, rivers and the sea. ‘Rivers are not like roads’, he wrote to Peacock in July 1816, ‘the work of the hands of man; they imitate mind, which wanders at will over pathless deserts, and flows through nature’s loveliest recesses, which are inaccessible to anything besides.’

Guitar presented by Shelley to his friend Jane Williams

Percy Bysshe Shelley – born on 4 August 1792

Shelley became an idol of the next three or four generations of poets, including important Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite poets such as Robert Browning and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. He was admired by Oscar Wilde, Thomas Hardy, George Bernard Shaw, Bertrand Russell, W. B. Yeats, Karl Marx, Upton Sinclair and Isadora Duncan.[3] Henry David Thoreau’s civil disobedience was apparently influenced by Shelley’s non-violence in protest and political action.