Archive for December, 2018

Goodbye 2018 – Going forward 2019

Monday, December 31st, 2018
  • In Memoriam …


    Photo by Michael Woods who was a close friend of Nicolas Roeg.
    Nicolas Roeg and Bernardo Bertolucci left us last Novemeber.

  • Hugh Masakela, Ursula Le Guin, Jack Whitten,, and Ed Moses left us last Jan 2018

    Jeff Geys (Belgian conceptual artist)

    Stephane Audran, Stephen Hawkins, Givenchy left us last March.

    Miyagawa, Milos Forman, and Cecil Taylor left us last April

    Philip Roth, Robert Indiana, Tom Wolf , Per Kerkeby Ermmano Olmi left us last May

    Donald Hall and Anthony Bourdain in June.

  • Robby Muller, Shinobu Hashimoto and…


    Jeanne Moreau and Martin Landau in July.

    Tom Clark, Aretha Franklin, VS Naipal, Antonio Dias,and Paul Taylor

    Kiki Kirin

    Annette Michelson

    Arthur Mitchell Paul Virillo

    Helen Alemida

    Charles Aznavour

    Subrata Mitra

    Robert Morris

    Pablo Ferro

    Sister Wendy

    RIP Sister Wendy – revisiting her lecture on Stanley Spencer

    Thursday, December 27th, 2018
  • (Episode 8 of the The Story of Painting
    Sister Wendy – in front of Monet’s paintings of waterlilies at L’Orangerie
    – talking about her experience of the paintings and how Monet painted them)

    via (Making a Mark)

    About Sister Wendy (1930-2018) – nun, art critic and unlikely TV star
    “Sister Wendy” as she was universally known – a.k.a. Sister Wendy Beckett, variously described as a broadcaster, art historian, art critic, consecrated virgin and hermit – died yesterday age 88 at her home and sanctuary at the Carmelite Monastery in Quidenham in Norfolk.

  • Sister Wendy’s lecture on Stanley Spencer, she was great – and funny.


    (Repost)
    Imaginative and Religious
    (learn more about Stanley Spencer here)
    )

  • Francesco del Cossa, Santa Lucia, Merry Christmas – 2018

    Tuesday, December 25th, 2018
  • Detail

    Francesco del Cossa, Santa Lucia (detail), c. 1473-1474. Tempera on panel, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.


  • Allegory of March Triumph of Minerva – Francesco Del Cossa.

    Great Day for the World, Gladys West Receives Air Force Honor

    Friday, December 21st, 2018
  • via

    Gladys West receives Air Force Honor (Mental Floss)

    Decades after she helped develop Global Positioning System (GPS) technology, 87-year-old Gladys West has received one of the Air Force space program’s highest distinctions, First Coast News reports.

    West was inducted into the Air Force Space and Missile Pioneers Hall of Fame at a ceremony at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. earlier this month. The honor was given in recognition of the work she did as one of the agency’s “human computers” in the era predating high-powered data processors. When West joined the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Virginia in 1956, she was one of just four black employees, two of whom were men. One of those men, Ira West, would later become her husband.

    Early in her career, West contributed to an astronomical study that proved the regularity of Pluto’s rotation relative to Neptune. From the mid-1970s through the 1980s, she programmed a computer to come up with a super-accurate model of the Earth, accounting for variations in the planet’s shape caused by gravitational, tidal, and other forces. This model laid the groundwork for the Global Positioning System (GPS) that’s ubiquitous in the military, smartphones, and cars today.

    West retired from the military in 1998, but she hasn’t stopped her pursuit of knowledge. In 2018, she completed her Ph.D. through a remote program with Virginia Tech.

    Roma – Memory of Alfonso Cuoron’s Childhood

    Friday, December 14th, 2018
  • Yalitza
    Yalitza Apricio
    (Interview here)


  • Roma

    Vanity Fair

    Cuaron: Yes, this film is autobiographical, in the sense that 90% of the scenes come out of my memory. We shot in the places where these scenes took place. I gathered 70% of the furniture in my home … from different family members spread all around Mexico. And then I cast actors that look as much as possible as the original people.

  • Cuoron explained his cinematography

    Cuarón Tells Lubezki How He Filmed ‘Roma’ — Even One Quiet Shot Needed 45 Camera Positions

  • Joaquin Phoenix Rising, Films directed by Lynne Ramsay, G. Van Sant & Jacques Audiard

    Sunday, December 9th, 2018
  • Sisters Brothers – Jacques Audiard, Joaquin Phoenix, John C Reilley

    Joaquin Phoenix: ‘Jacques Audiard is unique, even among French directors’

  • Jacques Audiard at MoMa


  • (Last year J. Phoenix won the best actor and Lynne Ramsay won the best scriptwriter award at Cannes)

    Guillame Del Toro tweeted.

    Lynn Ramsey’s You Were Never Really Here. What a great film… Non-fetishized violence, gritty poetry and full of humanity. One of the best directors working -and a fearless actor by her side.

    Phoenix was protective with Ramsay, neither of them were fond of talking – see Cannes Press Conference (Youtube)

    LA Times

    Joaquin Phoenix and Lynne Ramsay follow their instincts to find ‘You Were Never Really Here’

    “We filmed this shot of me floating in this pool, and she just got in the pool with me, and just was there with me, right off-camera,” Phoenix explained. “There’s something about Lynne—she feels things very strongly. You’ll hear her breathing and making sounds off-camera because you know that she’s in it. But she got in the pool with me, and that was on the first day of filming! I was like, ‘Ah, I love this woman’ Vanity Fair . .


  • Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far On Foot

    Rooney Mara played the ex-wife in “Her”. Joaquin P. suggested to Gus Van Sant that she plays the girlfriend of the Portland Cartoonist.

    (Portrait of Lautrec on the wall, Gus Van Sant directing Joaquin Phoenix)

    After River’s death, Van Sant offered him a meaty role in the black comedy “To Die For,” co-starring Nicole Kidman and Matt Dillon. It was Joaquin’s first role in four years.
    Twenty-three years later, Van Sant and Joaquin Phoenix are together again in “Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot,” a film about the late quadriplegic cartoonist John Callahan, who lived in Van Sant’s hometown of Portland, Ore.

  • Phoenix rising from Australia (more insightful)

    Is Joaquin Phoenix set to be the greatest actor of his generation?

  • Photos by Lisa Larsen & A. Eisenstaedt & Marilyn, Two “Life” Photographers

    Thursday, December 6th, 2018

  • Jocelyn and Marlon (sister and brother) in 1948 – photo by Lisa Larsen.


  • (Photo of Lisa Larsen by Rodney Williams)
    Lisa Larsen won awards as “Life” photographer , died of breast cancer at age of 34.

  • Laos
    photo by Lisa Larsen


  • (Marlon Brando 1948 – photo by Lisa Larsen)


  • Alfred Eisenstaedt – Chronicler of the Century was born on Dec 6, 1898.


  • (Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer – photo by Alfred Eisenstaed)